Ketzer Racing Team [Archive] - Boat Racing Facts Forums

Ketzer

03-23-2014, 05:11 PM

Hey, great pictures of my Dad and Diamondhead. I wasn't at that race, being off to college in Denver, but was at the previous one, the Jerry Waldman 2nd Memorial Race. I have pictures of that and will attach soon. In the meantime, although I sure can't compete with the "Baldy" story, I'll cut and paste appropriate excerpts (rough draft, to be sure) from my dad's story that I'm calling, "Inanimate Objects and other Family Members." The first concerns our first race boat, an old Neal hydroplane.

Back into boating, Dad bought each of his boys a pleasure boat. Jerry and Charles took theirs, and mine, a little runabout with a 25 horse Johnson outboard, floated in the boat dock. I took it out frequently to race around the bay, putting it into the sharpest turns it would tolerate, making it jump and roar through turns, just like our old movies of Joy Toy. When high school friends—Conover, Hyde, Watkins and Crumpton—came over, we took turns tearing around the bay. Without me knowing, Dad watched me play and the wheels started turning. He did some side work for Dan Futrell, and in exchange, instead of money, Futrell gave him an old hydroplane he raced, quite successfully, in the late 50’s, a Neal hydroplane with a 40 cubic inch Mercury outboard without a stitch of cowling, running straight pipes, a quicksilver lower unit, and the smallest propeller I’d ever seen. We drove to Nashville, Arkansas, to get it. The rounded front of the boat was covered in tattered fabric, painted black and grey, with the boat racing number, Lo-113, in larger numerals on either side of the bow. The smell of the boat was unique, like the smell of airplanes or a mechanic’s shop, but a smell I would recognize over the years. I looked in the hydroplane with its hand, squeeze throttle on the left side, a long pad, losing its stuffing on the floor, and asked, “Well, where do you put your legs?” and was told, “You don’t sit in it; you drive on your knees, crawl up over the steering wheel to get it up on plane, then on the straights, move back as far as you can go to get the front and sponsons out of the water, but if the front gets too light and squirrely, move up a little…back off the throttle when you approach a turn, scoot up and lean into the turn, always to the left, as far as you can—that’ll keep your right hand sponson from digging in and flipping you—then when you start coming out of the turn, get on that throttle and start moving up again.” Dad and I couldn’t wait to try it.

In the hanger back in Hot Springs, we ripped off the old fabric, cleaned out oily dirt and sand, stripped off the old varnish, refinished the wood top and bottom that came out beautifully grained, installed new Ceconite aircraft fabric (that was a trick Dad later taught boat racers, as most were still using cotton fabric that sounded like a bass drum when tapped, unlike the Ceconite’s snare), painted the bow a canary yellow and dutifully painted on the racing numbers, Lo-113, a piece of cake for Dad, who laid out and painted N-numbers on dozens of airplanes. Dad and Uncle Ed disassembled and rebuilt the engine at Futrell Aircraft; during the process, we sent the stacks, two conjoined pipes for four cylinders, out to be chromed and I painted the engine block Ford blue and aircraft Continental engine gold. With the Merc mounted on the Neal, but still in the hangar, the time came to see if it would “Pop.” We mixed gas, 50:1, hooked it up, primed it, and Futrell gave some very worthwhile advice on pulling the rope—the rope wasn’t attached to the engine, but had to be hand wrapped around the engine pulley on the crankshaft, at most one loop. Futrell said, “Now, Stevie, pull dat rope hard as you can…you don’t, motor gonna kick back, gonna pull dat handle right out your hand, through your fingers, gonna hurt like hell, maybe break a finger, and no tellin’ where dat rope gonna end up.”

I tried it with the switch off, and holy cow, what compression! Uncle Ed had to lean against the boat to keep me from pulling it off the stand, while Dad manned the throttle and switch on the other side. I’d propped airplanes, but I felt tied to this monster; it was either going to be me or it. Dad gave orders to do the deed. I put a loop around the flywheel. He flipped the switch and calmly said, “It’s hot.” I yanked as if my life depended on it, which I believed it did. On one pull, the Merc didn’t come to life with a pop, it came to life with a scream, one of the loudest sounds I’d ever heard, especially being in a hangar with corrugated steel for walls, like shooting a 30.06 without earplugs, but the Merc’s sound was high pitched, like a witch disapproving at the stake. Dad made it go, “WOW! WOW! WOW!” a few times, and then hit the kill switch. We were ear to ear smiles and wide eyed. Futrell said, “Dat…dat Neal a good boat. Dat boat a winner.”

We loaded up the Neal and hauled it to Bass Haven. With Dad’s unspoken, “You like to go fast in boats, Stevie? Give this a shot.” I donned Futrell’s racing life jacket, a motorcycle helmet and climbed in—we later discovered the old life jacket surrendered its buoyancy long ago and wouldn’t float a small child, much less a 170 pound high school football player. Dad and Ed lifted the stern out of the water, I gave that frightening rope a yank, spun around and grabbed the steering wheel and throttle, revved up the engine, they lowered me down, and I was off—getting it up on plane was like going from low to high with no gears in between. I seemed, indeed was, right on the water. Crouched down, the water was no more than a foot away, and it came up fast and disappeared chattering under the bow; looking to the side, the water was a blur. But the old Neal was stable, just floated and screamed down the straights, and then carved through the turns with the Merc’s scream then oscillating. It was amazing, exhilarating, death defying! In other words, it…was…fun!

By the time Dad went for a ride, after tweaking, adjusting and topping off the fuel tank, where I, from the bank, could appreciate the sound that negated all other sounds on and around the lake for a mile, spectators began to gather, but not just gawkers, boat racers whom we had never met. Jim Yates, who, it turned out, was a mechanic at a marina not far from us, showed up, but not before calling a few friends, all of whom came to watch. Jim raced a De Silva D-runabout, with a similar 40 cubic inch Merc, and also owned a Jones cabover D-hydroplane, but stopped racing the cabover, because, he said, it scared the hell out of him. Vernon Ashley also raced D-runabout. Bill Henderson raced D-Hydro, but was still recovering from the snakebite of flying one, some said, nearly as high as a telephone pole with disastrous results. Mickey Macguire raced B-Hydro, and was looking to buy a Konig alky burner and moving up to Pro Class. Roger Purtee, who had a B-hydro with a flathead Merc, but had yet to race. And Tom Goslee, who raced C-Service Hydro, an antique class using a highly modified and alky burning version of the Evinrude engines Dad had on No-Go and Joy Toy. With three lakes around Hot Springs, boat racers were in abundance, and from these new friends, we began to acquire knowledge.

Master Oil Racing Team

03-23-2014, 06:11 PM

I need to hear your family's full story Steve. Baldy and I always enjoyed your Dad's company and we would always talk at the races when time allowed, but I never sat down with him to really know him. I don't know you either other than previous correspondence, but you put all of us boat racers right there with you with the story you just told. My Baldy story is really the same thing as the story you just told. So far, I just started sooner, and maybe have more photos and packrat stuff, but your story is the same as most all of us. You start out with your Dad giving you boats, paying attention, then moving beyond that to really get you involved in something that you had a passion for. Same story as Baldy's....just a different locale, different team, but the boat racing family is all the same. We all have a lot of friends, pit crews, and officals from racing. Some we all have in common, some we just know by name and reputation, and there are many, many pit crews and families that we don't know names, but recognize. All of this put together is what I think distinguishes boat racers from other sports.

I am looking forward to more of your posts because you have the ability to put us in the pits or on the water, just like I can remember as a kid starting out. Any old memorabilia you have to post would be good along with the pictures and stories, but I realize that most people don't save much, or have lost boat racing treasures for one reason or another. To me, and I guess most other boat racers that is just extra on top of the stories. What inspired me to start the Baldy thread was Ron Hill posting the memories of Earnie Dawe on his travels to races. The Dawe family was on the west coast, and for them it was taking off a lot of time to go to the nationals. All those stories of each year's travel rekindled memories of our earlier years in going to races. It's a common theme, and what you just posted resonates in my opinion in the memories of boat racers.

Ketzer

03-24-2014, 10:46 AM

Thanks, Wayne. I was concerned the story might be too easy, not technical enough for Boatracingfacts, as it was written for the layman, and, besides, my technical expertise doesn't amount to squat--I was just a driver and a go-fer. But, yeah, I'm sure we met. Being a bit shy, and with Steve Sr. being such an out-going, fun-to-be-around, life-of-the-party type guy, it was easy for me to hang in the background and just watch and listen, which suited me fine. Then, I was drafted right out of high school in 1969, spent a year in Vietnam and a year in Keflavik, Iceland, among other places, and moved to Denver for college afterwards, so I missed most of those great racing years; although, I think with Tim Chance's help, my Dad did spring me from the USAF to attend Alex a couple times. Anyway, I'll take your advice, back up, and start the story from the top.

Ketzer

03-24-2014, 12:11 PM

No-Go: My mother took the photograph from the shore where, I think, she sat on a blanket with the picnic basket, because there are other pictures showing her there. 1953, so, of course, the photographs are black and white. I’m two or three years old, standing in an inner tube, at the water’s edge in a white jumper about the same shade as my towhead, an English bulldog, Pretty Boy, white with a dark saddle stands beside me. In the water in front of me is a runabout boat with an outboard motor. My father stands beside it at the back, about up to his knees, and he’s pouring fuel from a five gallon can into a fuel tank that’s affixed to the engine, an Evinrude engine with two huge opposed cylinders, and no cowling or engine covers. In the far background, to the right, my oldest brother, about eight, I think, stands in shallow water and has just flung a rock which you can see skipping on the water. Now, this would be Lake Hamilton in Hot Springs, Arkansas, a manmade lake that was formed by damming the Ouachita River in 1932. So the lake was fairly new, and Lake Ouachita, up river, was just beginning to fill. Trees fill the far shore, not butt to butt houses and boat docks like there are now; no other boats are on the water, no other people on the shore.

Joy-Toy: This is a color movie, 8 mm, 1956 or so; occasionally, you can see me running by on the sand, sand because we are now at Marine Stadium in Long Beach, California; California because Dad moved us out there where he attended City College, earned his A&E, went to work for Douglas Aircraft and helped build the DC-8. Our house was on Lomina Avenue, next door to Compton. Dad and two buddies back a boat into the water, another runabout with an Evinrude or Johnson outboard. They take turns driving the boat, putting it into tight turns, making it jump across its own wake waves. Sometimes when it turns, sunlight flashes off the paint (white with a red stripe). Over the decades, watching the movies together, we always await and comment on the flash. Someone, not my father, skies behind the boat. He has trouble getting up, as it’s not a ski boat, but eventually does. Oil derricks stand like bare, inverted trees on the opposite shore. This is where Dad fell in love with boat racing, going out to Marine Stadium to watch the Crackerbox races.

Bullet: When Dad joined the Long Beach Sportsman’s Club with his engineer buddies from Douglas and started duck hunting in Mexico, bird hunting in the lagoons, bear and deer hunting in the mountains, and sport fishing, the speed boat was replace with a cabin cruiser. There’s a color photograph of the boat sitting on our driveway on Pattiz, and I, along with a couple cousins and brothers Charlie and Jerry, stand, in order of height, alongside the boat. Jerry is smiling while holding a 25 pound yellow fin tuna by the tail. We were on Pattiz when the airplane crashed into Signal Hill and caught it on fire with consequent explosions that rained oil on Long Beach, on our house and the laundry that hung on the line. The oil company paid to have laundry replaced and houses repainted. Mom and Dad considered it a stroke of luck.

We lived next door to the Penny’s, Dick Penny being an engineer at Douglas who designed the cabin door on the DC-8. There were three Penny kids of my age and younger who were being raised in the Dr. Spock, hands-off the children method. For what those kids got away with, we would have been murdered. They took Christmas decorations off their tree, carried them out to the garage, lined up the bulbs which they broke with a hammer, just to watch glass shatter. They filled their mouths with Bosco chocolate syrup, and, turning in a circle, sprayed it. The oldest boy, my age of seven or eight, walked around sucking on a pacifier.

Except for the pacifier, I not only witnessed these actions, but took part. Hearing this story recently, my daughter-in-law, a school teacher, asked, “How do you think those kids turned out?” Without much thought, I replied, “Well, having gotten it out of their system, I imagine they turned out well-adjusted and quite successful, while I, at 64, am still getting it out of my system.” The room erupted in laughter, while I tried to decide whether or not I had told a joke. Anyway, over at our house, my brothers and I huddled around the TV to watch King Kong for the sixth or seventh time. Local television in those days ran and repeated movies for weeks, usually Shirley Temple or Westerns, but this was different; this was King Kong! Still, after that many viewings, Dad announced he had had it with King Kong, and so, consequently, had we. There would be no more watching of King Kong. Not to be denied, we snuck, we thought, over to the Penny’s and watched it yet again. When Dad learned of the transgression, we were whipped sufficiently. As he sometimes told our mother, “Someone has to be the son-of-a-bitch around here!”

Also on Pattiz, I learned that if, with the water on, I pushed the garden hose nozzle into the lawn, it tunneled into the ground, deeper and deeper, but that with the water shut off, and later in the day, the hose was impossible to pull out. Neither could Dad pull it out when he came home from work. I didn’t receive a whipping for that one, probably because Dad worked in Experiment and Testing at Douglas and considered it a valid exercise in hydraulics. On the other side of our house lived a Mexican family, and the wife, Sarah, taught Mom how to make flour tortillas, and here’s the recipe, circa 1957:

Sarah’s Flour Tortillas
4 cups flour
2 teaspoons salt
½ cup shortening

Add one cup lukewarm water to above and blend well. Knead about 50 strokes. Divide dough into twelve balls. Cover with cloth and let stand 15 minutes. Roll each ball into 8 inch round tortilla [She wrote eight inches, but I remember them a bit larger and paper thin, and once rolled out, she placed each tortilla on a plate, each separated with a sheet of waxed paper]. Cook on a moderately hot ungreased skillet until golden brown in spots, turning once and being careful not to break air bubbles. [I’ll add, too, that the tortillas were served with, in bowls placed on the table, salsa, shredded iceberg lettuce, diced tomatoes, shredded cheddar cheese, refried beans and ground hamburger with onions. As soon as the tortilla came off the skillet, she added hamburger meat and folded the tortilla. Once several were done, we started grabbing, while Mom, unbelievably happy at the stove, made more until her husband, and each of her three boys, said, “Oh, no, I can’t eat anymore.” Anyway, you opened up the tortilla and added cheese (maybe a slather of refried beans), lettuce, tomatoes, salsa, rolled it up, added refried beans to your plate, and chowed down. In 1957, we called them tacos; today, they might be called burritos. And at that time, we had nothing else on the side, no sour cream, no guacamole and chips, just the tacos and refried beans, and that was plenty.]

In the backyard, we had a large sandbox, but Pretty Boy and Betsy the cat were the only family members who used it—the sand was alive with fleas. To walk across the sand was to invite attack, and to stand in it for mere seconds, ones legs would be covered, as was Pretty Boy and the cat, for that matter. The neighborhoods were full of kids; every house had them. A tough kid who lived down the street was larger than and tormented Charlie. On bicycle, Charlie had to plan his escape and return to the neighborhood. One day, Jerry borrowed Charlie’s bicycle and took off on an errand. The bully, thinking him Charlie, emerged from bushes and knocked Jerry off the bicycle. Having learned how to box in Arkansas, Jerry got up and demolished the bully, who ceased to be a problem.

(Photos of No-Go and Bullet)

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(Photos of Bullet; Steve Ketzer and Coy Black; Jane Ketzer looking tired after a trip.)

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Master Oil Racing Team

03-24-2014, 12:53 PM

The pictures are just fine Steve. I like those old black and white pictures. Great stories too.

Ketzer

03-25-2014, 09:47 AM

Bacardi Coach: Around 1958 the DC-8 prototype was flown to Edwards Air Force Base for flight testing, and it developed a pressurization problem that had the engineers pulling their hair out—there was just no reason the system shouldn’t be working. Douglas flew Dad out to Edwards to see if he could put a finger on it, but not before the military granted him a one-time, secret clearance to get on base, as much was happening at Edwards in those days (and I can only hope still is). Dad brushed aside the calculations and theories provided by the engineers, climbed inside that huge airplane, positioned himself by the pressurization valves, had them blow it up, and then dump it. What he found was a piece of insulation that floated up to block the outflow valve, and then floated right back down into position. The engineers, being engineers, would have never found it. A few decades later, I was running an aircraft maintenance shop in Hot Springs, across the field from Dad and Uncle Ed over at Futrell’s. A Beech Duke had me perplexed. The battery kept draining down, and yet everything tested fine, so I called Dad over to bail me out, as I often did. He asked what was hot, and I went through the short list of hot-wired items, including the nose baggage light that I said wasn’t the problem, because I had checked switch adjustment and put a meter on it, jiggled wires, switch and so forth. Dad said, “Get up in there,” and he shoved me up into the compartment that was large enough for a couple suitcases, closed the door, latched it, tapped on the door, and asked, “Is the light on?” And I sheepishly replied, “Yeah…yeah, Dad. It’s on.” But I’ve jumped ahead.

Whether houses, airplanes, boats, or motorcycles, we knew not to get too attached to inanimate objects, because they would soon be gone, traded for something usually requiring much work, but bigger and better. No one, except Dad, knew of these transactions, until he, without announcement, surprised us. So there was a larger, newer cabin cruiser sitting on the driveway of our house on Western Avenue in Anaheim. From that boat we caught tuna, barracuda, flounder, rock bass and mackerel, the latter quite good when smoked. Mom and I were usually seasick and down below deck, sleeping together on a bunk. Jerry wasn’t much of a seaman, either, but Charlie was out there fishing with Dad at all hours and once saw a shark emerge alongside the boat and equaled its length. We made trips to Catalina and dropped anchor for the night in Avalon Bay with water so clear it looked like the bottom was mere inches away, larger boats and sailboats also rocked at anchor with young couples, having just survived the Great Depression and WWII, lounging on decks, having cocktails and singing. And as the song went, “Twenty-six miles across the sea, Santa Catalina is waiting for me. Santa Catalina is the island of romance, romance, romance, romance…”

Mom spent the depression years on a small, family farm in Mt. Ida, Arkansas, so hadn’t experienced the worst of it, while Dad as a child lived in Indianapolis and Cincinnati and remembered standing in soup lines. Also, he was one of Darby’s original Rangers in WWII, had been wounded and captured by Rommel’s troops in Tunisia and spent over two years as a POW. Indeed, he was in at Stalag 2B in Germany when the Allies hit the beaches at Normandy. But when he returned from the war, he, like most WWII veterans, shoved all those memories into some secret compartment of the mind and charged on to build the America we know, and more importantly, had a ball while doing it. (I won’t say more about the Rangers as that could go on for many pages, and I’m trying to get back to boat racing, but if you’re interested, search “Steve Ketzer Ranger.” I will attach a couple pictures, one of poor quality, but the only photo I have of him wearing a Ranger patch. He’s leaning on a P-51, and it’s in Okinawa, circa 1947, while he was with the Army Air Corps. The other photo is of him on a motorcycle in Okinawa—I don’t know how he ended up with a motorcycle.) 5675356754

Art Kampen

03-25-2014, 10:13 AM

Looking at some of the first photos. Ketzer Racing came to a lot of St louis ODA races in the 70`s. The photo you describe as St louis was actually taken at New Madrid Mo On the Mississippi river. The reason i recognize it ,that was my wifes hometown. The one where your lifting the Jones hydro, I think was at Poplar Bluff Mo. on the Black River. The course was barely big enough to fit just a few boats at a time. Raced against you guys many times during that era. Great times!

Ketzer

03-25-2014, 11:08 AM

Thanks for the clarification, Art! Those pictures were from my dad's old slides, and they weren't marked, so I gave it a wag. But, hey, I was pretty close, huh? Yes, they were great times for sure.

Ketzer

03-27-2014, 08:09 AM

I’ll add more of Steve Ketzer’s slides and then wrap up the “Bacardi Coach” section. The first is, L-R, Vernon Ashley, Jerry McMillian (with tell-tall bell pipe imprints…I’d guess D-flathead), and Steve Ketzer. I’m not sure of the location, but the photos that follow are at the 2nd Jerry Waldman Memorial Race at Diamondhead, Hot Springs, AR.
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This is Butch Leavendusky, a great and fearless runabout driver, but I can’t remember who he’s talking to here.
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The Ketzer Racing Team, Uncle Ed Ketzer, Vernon Ashley, Steve Ketzer, Charles Bradley (my half-brother), and Steve Jr., i.e., me.
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Stan Leavendusky doing a walkabout and giving me that look. He and Steve were good buddies, a regular Mutt and Jeff team, but tough hombres. Stan, though, was twice as big as Steve, so I gave him a wide berth, especially when he had that look.
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A similar Ketzer Racing Team picture, but with my cousin Mikey Gronlie, the redhead, replacing Steve Sr., and with Bill Van in the background providing raspberries. Mikey, recently transplanted to Arkansas from Brooklyn, N.Y., got to come to races if he helped in the pits, and he was usually great help, a strong back, and much fun. But on one trip, for some reason, he was being a real slug, so Steve got on him, told Mikey he wouldn’t be able to stay in the camper anymore, to which Mikey, in his Brooklyn accent, replied, “F the camper!” I held my breath, fearing for Mikey’s life, but Steve let it go. Had it been me, I would have been on the ground in a heartbeat with the old man right on top of me. Mikey got a pass, but for the rest of the trip, all he heard from the rest of us, in our best Arkie versions of a Brooklyn accent, including Vernon Ashley, who managed to work it into every sentence, was, “F the camper!” Mike joined the Navy soon afterwards, and while stationed in Meridian, Mississippi, he died in a car accident coming back from a Joe Cocker concert. He was 18.
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Steve Jr., either putting the boats to bed or waking them up.
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Bill Van’s pit at Diamondhead. Bill and Steve were good buddies, as well.
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Ketzer

03-28-2014, 07:02 AM

Our house on Western in Anaheim was new and on a corner lot with orange groves across the street where the suburbs were destined to spread like The Blob. My scamp friends and I picked those oranges, lined them across the street, and hid awaiting cars, but ran like hell if one stopped. Knott’s Berry Farm at the time didn’t charge for admission, but charged for rides, and was a bicycle ride away—if we couldn’t afford the candy, we could at least stare through the window and watch it being made. A couple blocks from our house, a strip mall offered haircuts, groceries, candy and baseball cards, the latter costing a nickel a pack, and every five pennies I could gather went for cards, always hoping to get Stan Musial or Mickey Mantle, but never did, although with a jaw already full of bubblegum I unwrapped some good ones: Roger Maris, Sandy Koufax, Orlando Cepeda, Willy Mays, Juan Marichal, Don Drysdale. I liked marbles, too, but spent no money there. Leaving for school, I might have half a dozen marbles in my pocket, but often came home with pockets bulging. I was a winner at marbles and had several Nestles Quick cans full of them, cat’s eyes, clearies, aggies, comets, boulders, steelies…everything. Most I won on the playground in one of two games. The first was to draw a circle in the dirt, and with one or more contestants, drop an equal number of marbles in the circle and, after lagging to see who went first, proceed to shoot them out; if you shot one out, and your marble stayed inside the circle, you kept shooting. The second and a game I especially enjoyed resembled a carnival come-on. A boy, never a girl, lined up marbles with considerable space in between, and drew a line some three to five yards away where you shot your marble. If you hit one of his, you kept it; if you missed, he kept it. Those were the rules we abided with no school or governmental oversight.

When Aunt Helen and Uncle Larry came down to visit from Sacramento, Helen sat on the living room floor while I, the room away, had a can of marbles dumped out and was busy sorting them by size and type, when she poked her index finger into the carpet and said, “If you’re so good, let me see you hit my finger.” Taking the challenge, I selected a marble, crouched down and took aim, using my preferred method, which some boys disparagingly called, “Connie thumbing it,” that is, shooting the marble off the index finger instead of the next finger back (the bird finger), and shot. The marble skipped across the carpet, all the way across the room, and struck Aunt Helen’s finger. She clapped, while I, shrugging as if there had been no question, was happy she didn’t ask me to do it again, as it amounted to a hole-in-one or hitting the basket from half-court.

My first vivid memories of Christmas came from that house on Western Avenue. Although seldom necessary, the fireplace was lit, and the Christmas tree took up the whole of the picture widow, festooned with garlands, bubble lights, lead icicles, standard glass bulbs, and decorations made at school or that Charlie made years earlier while in Cub Scouts—hanging walnuts painted silver and sprinkled with glitter, each a time capsule, containing a penny to reflect the year of creation. Dad, a great gift giver, had the presents arranged beneath the tree in tunnels and ramps to accommodate a model train that noisily and endlessly circled, despite the occasional icicle that fell across the tracks and sparked until it melted. One Christmas morning, we awoke to find the presents gone, and in their place, a treasure map that led here and there about the house where we found other clues and eventually found the presents stacked behind the divan.

While we shook packages and guessed, the unmistakable smell of Christmas cookies baking came from the kitchen. My favorites being the polvorones and candy cane cookies, and of the two, the candy cane. Mom got that recipe from a neighbor when we lived on Lomina around 1955:

Joyce Bevis’ Candy Cane Cookies

Preheat oven to 375
Mix together thoroughly:
1 cup soft shortening (half butter and margarine)
1 cup sifted confectioner’s sugar
1 egg
1 ½ teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla
Sift together and stir in:
2 ½ cups flour
1 teaspoon salt

Divide dough into halves. Blend into one half ½ teaspoon red food coloring. Roll one teaspoon each color dough into a strip about four inches. Place strips side by side. Press lightly together and twist like rope. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Curve top down to make handle of cane. Bake about nine minutes (or until lightly browned). Remove with spatula from cookie sheet and while still warm sprinkle with a mixture of ½ crushed peppermint candy and ½ cup sugar. Makes four dozen. Smooth rolls can be made by rolling small strips on lightly floured, cloth covered board. Make complete cookies one at a time. Rolls become too dry to twist if you shape all the dough of one color at a time.

Also from Western come memories of my brothers and I beginning, and perhaps even allowed, to cook for ourselves, but nothing more extravagant than boiling hotdogs or frying bacon and eggs. But the kitchen and stove in general provided opportunities for experimentation of a scientific nature. Placing a marble on a spoon, I heated the spoon until it began to turn red, then dropped the marble into a glass of cold water, upon which, the marble fractured, rendering it beautiful inside, but useless on the playground, as it fell apart when struck by another marble. We found matches and aluminum foil in the cabinet and made missiles by tightly wrapping the match head with foil, propping it on the kitchen table, and lighting it off with another match. We held contests to see whose missile could go farthest, the contests resulting in not too noticeable flaws on the linoleum floor.

Our neighbors next door, unbeknownst to them, or rather him, introduced me to something new: the unclad female figure, by way of Playboy centerfolds he tacked to the garage walls. With the garage door often open, and no one in there, I strolled that museum and gazed at the art from near and far, from this angle and that; although, in the 50s, much was left to the imagination, and I came away supposing the female of the species to be fairly hairless, while Dad, I knew from direct observation, had silverback gorillas hanging on the family tree.

During the time in California and while working at Douglas, Dad held a second job at Sunset Beach Airport where he worked on GA aircraft, repairing, recovering and painting them. He did some beautiful work, coming up with original paint schemes, and here are a few pictures of a couple planes he owned back then, starting with a Fairchild 24 he rebuilt at our house on Lomina around 1955. He had the fuselage covered in the backyard (that’s me standing by it and brother Charlie leaning on the landing gear), the wings and flight controls hanging in the garage, and to get the nice, “crinkle” finish on the instrument panel, he baked sections of it in Mom’s oven, much to her dismay. The garage always smelled of dope, the kind you brush on fabric, not the other kind, but if applying in an unventilated area, it could get you high. And there’s a picture of the finished product in color, but a bit blurry, and a Stinson Voyager he had and rebuilt in 1960. Also, I’ll attach pictures of his PT-19 with a canopy conversion. That’s him, working out of his Woody, doing a brake job at Long Beach Airport—note the old can of Lubriplate—and then Mom sitting in the airplane. (Some of his best paint jobs he put on other peoples airplanes, my favorites being a Waco and a Stagger-Wing Beech, but I can’t find those pictures.) Lastly, Steve Ketzer twirling a handlebar in his Douglas coveralls.

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There will be one more stop before the Ketzer Racing Team starts racing, but I've got to get them back to Arkansas first. (My attached pictures came out upside down, so transpose the descriptions.)

Master Oil Racing Team

03-28-2014, 01:49 PM

I never knew all that stuff about Steve. It's a great story. Your Mom is very pretty.

I've had the same problems with the pictures out of order Steve. I started paying attention to the numbers, and you can move them around where you want them before you click 'submit reply".

Ketzer

03-29-2014, 05:30 AM

Thanks, Wayne. Yeah, my mom was pretty. They were quite a pair. She was very, very religious and devout, and he, not a jot. I'll attach another photo of her, Jane Ketzer.

In your post above to this thread, you have a few pictures showing our L-113 hydro, red and white, that we got used from someone. It came with the name "Cool Cat" and we kept it. Do you happen to recall who made the boat (I'm thinking Marchetti) and who owned it before us? I plan on putting it in the story later, but I've gone brain-dead.

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Master Oil Racing Team

03-29-2014, 07:15 AM

It's a Marchetti Steve, but I don't know who was the previous owner. It has a Konig throttle. Ed Holstein out of Kansas had some red and white boats I think.

Ketzer

03-29-2014, 11:10 AM

Thanks, Wayne. I knew you'd know! By the way, I'm not making any more posts toward this thread until I finish your "Baldy" story.

Ketzer

03-31-2014, 03:13 PM

Lips: If it couldn’t be flown, ridden, driven, shot, caught or cooked, Dad wasn’t too interested, and that applied to the world of the spirit, as well. But Mom was very devout and in church with her three boys lined up beside her whenever the doors were open. In the fashion of Bubba Gump’s shrimp, you had, of course, Sunday School church and Sunday morning church, Sunday night church, and then Wednesday night church, special retreats church, testifying church trips, church related concerts to see the likes of Doris Akers, church revivals, and church camp. Dad was opposed to all but the last that provided him and Mom the opportunity to go on a road trip back to Hot Springs without three boys fighting and complaining on the back seat. So, while Charlie, Jerry and I were in the mountains at Big Bear sleeping in bunk houses and jumping on trampolines—well, I jumped on trampolines; they were probably kissing girls somewhere—he and Mom took off on the road trip to Hot Springs to visit relatives, and discovered, while there, that Montgomery Field lacked an aviation maintenance facility, a discovery destined to affect our future.

Just prior to that, though, Mom and Dad separated for a brief period, but long enough for the house on Western to go away. We were all soon reunited in a rental house in Hawaiian Gardens. While it probably broke Mom’s heart to lose the new house on Western for the rather dilapidated rental (as she walked through the house in heels, a heel punched through the wooden floor: at some stage in its history, the house had been eaten thin by termites), to us boys, it was a regular Garden of Eden. A one-room guest house sat in the jungle of a back yard amidst trees, thick bamboo and elephant ears. Charlie and Jerry pretty much had a house to themselves. Also in the backyard was a concrete pad for shuffleboard and the yard backed up against an ally with a short chain link fence over which Charlie, having taken to fighting as a teenager, jumped into safety when chased home by Mexicans, Hawaiian Gardens being equally divided between Gringos and Mexicans who sometimes didn’t see eye to eye. Your yard and house were safe havens back then, as with Quasimodo in Notre Dame: Sanctuary! Sanctuary!

A power line ran down the alley and was perfect for playing myself at “Homerun Derby”—now I’m Mantle, now Maris, now Mays, now Musial—using as balls a bulbous, hard fruit of some sort that fell from a tree. Across the street in front was a golf driving range where Jerry got a job gathering and washing golf balls, and down the street a couple blocks, a Little League baseball stadium where I played left field and short stop for “Bill’s Auto Parts,” that won our division and were treated to a trip to watch the newly minted Los Angles Angels play the also new Minnesota Twins. On another occasion, Jerry, with our church group, took me to see the Dodgers play the Milwaukee Braves at the Coliseum (Don Drysdale pitched and also hit a home run).

It all came to an end when Dad talked a flying buddy into moving to Hot Springs and starting an aviation maintenance and air taxi operation: Ketzer and Wendel Aircraft. The boats and airplane disappeared, and in their place sat a box truck on the driveway. The box truck, a 1949 Chevy two-ton, once belonged to a carpet cleaning business that promised, after cleaning, your carpets would be, “as clean as a kiss.” Consequently, the truck’s white paint, looking like some target of affection for giant women, was covered with red lips. Dad painted over the promise and the company name, but allowed the lips to stay, and in that truck we loaded our portion of the world, including Pretty Boy in a cage, and headed back to Arkansas, Jerry and Mom taking turns driving her Corvair Monza and following behind.

That was the end of this segment, but since then, I read Wayne’s “Baldy” and came across a possible schism in the Baldwin family due to the Kennedy/Nixon presidential election. There was a similar schism in mine, but it was a bit more pronounced. Dad supported Kennedy, but wasn’t vocal about it, always believing you shouldn’t spill the beans regarding politics. Mom and her church-going boys, all Protestants, believed, should the election fall to the Catholic Kennedy, we would surely be put to death. My grade school was holding a mock election, and I was appointed campaign chairman for the Nixon side, not that I was any great shakes, but merely owing to the fact that everyone else was for Kennedy, because, for one, the students were mostly Catholic, and, for two, there was a rumor that should Nixon be elected there would be six days of school. What? Six days of school! Neither Democrat nor Republican was for that to the extent 99% were in the Kennedy camp. I didn’t believe the rumor, but didn’t know how to dispel it. Mom had a solution: “Stevie, why don’t you just write to them and ask?” So I did. I wrote to the Nixon campaign headquarters in Southern California. Not only did I get a reply stating the rumor was false, but they sent a bunch of campaign paraphernalia, in addition to what I asked for, all of which I took with me as I marched from class to class, read and showed the letter, and passed out free stuff. The Nixon staff apparently got a kick out of my letter and wrote about it in a news release to the L.A. Times, and the Times printed the story. Well, that’s where things went bad, because Dad’s co-workers at Douglas saw the article and razzed him unmercifully. Everywhere he went, my don’t-spill-the-beans dad got, “O, ho! We know how you’re going to vote, Ketzer!” No amount of “You don’t know how the hell I’m going to vote!” would convince them he wasn’t for Nixon. Kennedy still won the election at my school, but it was very close, a percentage point or two.

Under Kennedy, we spent the Cuban missile crisis in Long Beach, and then loaded up and headed back to the land of my birth, God’s country, that I had heard so much about. We would have seasons and snow. Why, there were trees all over the woods with nuts called hickory nuts that fell on the ground and were just there for the taking. There were persimmon and wild plumb trees and something called poke salad that grew everywhere. And for me there would be no more pulling tar off telephone poles and chewing it, because a tree grew in Arkansas, called a Sweet Gum tree, and you could walk right up to it and pull off gum.
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Ketzer

04-03-2014, 03:43 AM

Note: I've caught up, so this will be a partial repeat.

The Neal: Over the years, Wendel having returned to California with his family after little more than a year, Dad built up the business, sold it, and went to work for the new owner, Dan Futrell, which allowed him to get back to the serious business of concentrating on his toys: motorcycles, airplanes and boats that he worked on in the hangar when things were slow, and often when things weren’t slow. When Ketzer & Wendel split, Wendel took the Cessna T-50 “Bamboo Bomber” they (we) rebuilt and used for air taxi in exchange for his half of the business. At twelve, I spent many hours working on the T-50. Using a jackknife and without damaging the wood, I plucked hundreds of rusted staples from that beast where fabric had been attached in a frenzy during WWII, the Bamboo Bomber having been used as a twin engine trainer for the Army Air Corps (the last word in this sentence pronounced “core” not “corpse”).

In four years, we moved four times, each time to a better house, including one “Green Acres” experiment out toward Peary where we plowed the field with a horse—by then, everyone else was using tractors. Dad bought, rebuilt and sold several airplanes, including a Bonanza, a Navion, a Mooney, an Aeronca Chief, and a Cessna 195. (Mom by the Navion; my buddy Conover by the 195, and me, in my white aircraft mechanic coveralls by the Aeronca.)

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On Lake Hamilton, Dad bought a lakeside resort, named Bass Haven, complete with a two bedroom house up on the hill, eight cabins down by the shore, a covered four stall boat dock, swimming dock, and a large gazebo with an attached recreation room. Bass Haven, built pre-WWII, was a maintenance nightmare, the well forever lost its prime, plumbing in the cottages clogged up, electrical problems blew fuses, and we had the standard upkeep of cleaning, painting, mowing, and hauling trash—not to mention renting rooms and bookkeeping—all of which we did ourselves. By that time, Charles and Jerry had both married and flew the nest, so the resort was a handful for Mom and Dad, even with me being the trash man, lawn boy, head painter, and spending hours ramming a snake down someone else’s toilet. I spent my high school years at Bass Haven, and although it provided an array of opportunities for teenage fun, all I saw was work and escaped it as often as possible.

Back into boating, Dad bought each of his boys a pleasure boat. From the last time this section was posted, I’ll add that we, like most boat racers we knew, hung in the middle of the middle-class. What Dad got, he got by wheeling and dealing, trading, but mostly through his own labor, or trading labor—he painted Tommy Goslee’s hydro, and thereafter whenever we needed something printed, we went to Goslee’s Print Shop; ditto with Bill Henderson, who was a sign painter and did all the lettering on our racing trailers and helmets. He took something worthwhile that needed repair, overhaul, new paint, and new upholstery, and made it new again, which was the case with the pleasure boats, and of course I, being his number one go to for paint stripping, sanding, fiberglass work, engine disassembly and cleaning, was always involved. He would cruise by to inspect my work and then took over at the end, to reassemble or paint, laying out the lines in quarter inch tape at which he was such an artist having put so many paint jobs on airplanes. And it was the case with the airplanes he owned. His V-Tail Bonanza, for instance, he got out of annual, beyond TBO, and in need of the dreaded wing spar kit, all of which he did himself, and again, I was right there with him; although sometimes my task amounted to no more than running out to get doughnuts.

Jerry and Charles took their boats, and mine, a little runabout with a 25 horse Johnson outboard, floated in the boat dock. I took it out frequently to race around the bay, putting it into the sharpest turns it would tolerate, making it jump and roar through turns, just like our old movies of Joy Toy. When high school friends—Conover, Hyde, Watkins and Crumpton—came over, we took turns tearing around the bay. Without me knowing, Dad watched me play and the wheels started turning. He did some side work for Dan Futrell, and in exchange, instead of money, Futrell gave him an old hydroplane he raced, quite successfully, in the late 50’s, a Neal hydroplane with a 40 cubic inch Mercury outboard without a stitch of cowling, running straight pipes, a quicksilver lower unit, and the smallest propeller I’d ever seen. We drove to Nashville, Arkansas, to get it. The rounded front of the boat was covered in tattered fabric, painted black and grey, with the boat racing number, Lo-113, in larger numerals on either side of the bow. The smell of the boat was unique, like the smell of airplanes or a mechanic’s shop, but a smell I would recognize over the years. I looked in the hydroplane with its hand, squeeze throttle on the left side, a long pad, losing its stuffing on the floor, and asked, “Well, where do you put your legs?” and was told, “You don’t sit in it; you drive on your knees, crawl up over the steering wheel to get it up on plane, then on the straights, move back as far as you can go to get the front and sponsons out of the water, but if the front gets too light and squirrely, move up a little…back off the throttle when you approach a turn, scoot up and lean into the turn, always to the left, as far as you can—that’ll keep your right hand sponson from digging in and flipping you—then when you start coming out of the turn, get on that throttle and start moving up again.” Dad and I couldn’t wait to try it.

In the hanger back in Hot Springs, we ripped off the old fabric, cleaned out oily dirt and sand, stripped off the old varnish, refinished the wood top and bottom that came out beautifully grained, installed new Ceconite aircraft fabric (that was a trick Dad later taught boat racers, as most were still using cotton fabric that sounded like a bass drum when tapped, unlike the Ceconite’s snare), painted the bow a canary yellow and dutifully painted on the racing numbers, Lo-113, a piece of cake for Dad, who laid out and painted N-numbers on airplanes. Dad and Uncle Ed disassembled and rebuilt the engine at Futrell Aircraft; during the process, we sent the stacks, two conjoined pipes for four cylinders, out to be chromed and I painted the tower housing Ford blue and engine aircraft Continental engine gold. With the Merc mounted on the Neal, but still in the hangar, the time came to see if it would “Pop.” We mixed gas, 50:1, hooked it up, primed it, and Futrell gave some very worthwhile advice on pulling the rope—the rope wasn’t attached to the engine, but had to be hand wrapped around the engine pulley on the crankshaft, at most one loop. Futrell said, “Now, Stevie, pull dat rope hard as you can…you don’t, motor gonna kick back, gonna pull dat handle right out your hand, through your fingers, gonna hurt like hell, maybe break a finger, and no tellin’ where dat rope gonna end up.”

I tried it with the switch off, and holy cow, what compression! Uncle Ed had to lean against the boat to keep me from pulling it off the stand, while Dad manned the throttle and switch on the other side. I’d propped airplanes, but I felt tied to that monster; it was either going to be me or it. Dad gave orders to do the deed. I put a loop around the flywheel. He flipped the switch and calmly said, “It’s hot.” I yanked as if my life depended on it, which I believed it did. The Merc didn’t come to life with a pop, it came to life with a scream, one of the loudest sounds I’d ever heard, especially being in a hangar with corrugated steel for walls, like shooting a 30.06 without earplugs, but the Merc’s sound was high pitched, like a witch disapproving at the stake. Dad made it go, “WOW! WOW! WOW!” a few times, and then hit the kill switch. We were ear to ear smiles and wide eyed. Futrell said, “Dat…dat Neal a good boat. Dat boat a winner.”

We loaded up the Neal and hauled it to Bass Haven. With Dad’s unspoken, “You like to go fast in boats, Stevie? Give this a shot.” I donned Futrell’s racing life jacket and a motorcycle helmet and climbed in—we later discovered the old life jacket surrendered its buoyancy long ago and wouldn’t float a small child, much less a 170 pound high school football player. Dad and Ed lifted the stern out of the water, I gave that frightening rope a yank, spun around and grabbed the steering wheel and throttle, revved up the engine, they lowered me down, and I was off—getting it up on plane was like going from low to high with no gears in between. I seemed, indeed was, right on the water. Crouched down, the water was no more than a foot away, and it came up fast and disappeared chattering under the bow; looking to the side, the water was a blur. But the old Neal was stable, just floated and screamed down the straights, and then carved through the turns with the Merc’s scream then oscillating. It was amazing, exhilarating, death defying! In other words, it…was…fun!

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(Those were the only pictures I have of he old Neal and were taken later at boat races; the last with brother Charlie on the left.)

By the time Dad went for a ride, after tweaking, adjusting and topping off the fuel tank, where I, from the bank, could appreciate the sound that negated all other sounds on and around the lake for a mile, spectators began to gather, but not just gawkers, boat racers whom we had never met. Jim Yates, who, it turned out, was a mechanic at a marina not far from us, showed up, but not before calling a few friends, all of whom came to watch. Jim raced a De Silva D-runabout, with a similar 40 cubic inch Merc, and also owned a Jones cabover D-hydroplane, but stopped racing the cabover, because, he said, it scared the hell out of him. Vernon Ashley also raced D-runabout. Bill Henderson raced D-Hydro, but was still recovering from the snakebite of flying one, some said, nearly as high as a telephone pole with disastrous results. Mickey Macguire raced B-Hydro, and was looking to buy a Konig alky burner and move up to Pro Class. Roger Purtee had a B-hydro with a flathead Merc, but had yet to race. And Tom Goslee, who raced C-Service Hydro, an antique class using a highly modified and alky burning version of the Evinrude engines Dad had on No-Go and Joy Toy. With three lakes around Hot Springs, boat racers were in abundance, and from these new friends, we began to acquire knowledge.

Ketzer

04-06-2014, 04:15 AM

The Barn Door: One of the first things we learned, after several threatening phone calls—one promising to shoot us from the water with a shotgun—and a visit from the sheriff’s office, was that what we considered fun, as far as many were concerned, was a disruption of the peace. Our newly acquired boat racing buddies verified, that, yeah, according to local law, we weren’t supposed to be on public water raising hell unless in preparation for a race on that water, and that a mere 48 hours prior to the event. As our property at Bass Haven bordered a perfect bay for such activity, we considered it a pity, but started testing out at Twin Creeks on Lake Ouachita, where lakefront houses were not allowed, and people were scarce.

When Dad jumped into something, he not only jumped with both feet, but with all the feet around him, including mine, Uncle Ed’s. And any of my buddies who happened by would be put to work cleaning and sanding, lifting this, holding that. There was no free lunch at the Ketzer’s. He began searching for, buying and resurrecting old racing boats and engines, all modified gas burners at that time, some found covered with dust and chicken droppings in barns or hanging from rafters that he acquired by trade or purchased for a song. Soon, including Jim Yate’s Jones, we had three D –hydros, a B-hydro, a D-runabout, and an B-runabout with Merc engines to match. We also ended up with Futrell’s racing trailer than could carry three boats, had an engine box large enough to house six engines, and we built a rack for the pick-up truck to carry and additional hydroplane. Obviously, we were going boat racing.

We also learned that the “Lo” in Lo-113 was no longer legitimate, that in years gone by it meant you were from Louisiana’s district, but Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi had been combined into one district, District 9, that used only the letter “L” followed by a number, and you couldn’t just slap on any number, but had to apply for it through the National Outboard Association (N.O.A.), or the American Powerboat Association (A.P.B.A.). With verification no one else had your requested number, it would be granted, and that number could be used for your entire fleet of racing boats. We dutifully became members of the N.O.A. as well as the A.P.B.A. and later applied for the racing number, L-113. Until then, we raced with Lo-113 on all our boats. (A shot of our boats at a race in Oklahoma during the summer of 1968; Vernon Ashley in his runabout.)

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At Twin Creeks in the Spring of 1968, with only the Neal, we attended our first, although unsanctioned and local, boat race with the aforementioned boat racers. Dad already knew, but here I learned about the running start, that is, where the race starts off a huge, white clock, usually positioned on the bank or a boat dock, parallel with an imaginary start line to a buoy, the clock with but one black hand, equally huge, that marked down the seconds. By the clock was a canon rigged to blow a substantial puff of white smoke. Five minutes prior to the start of the race, the canon fired, which meant you had five minutes to get your engine started and get out on the course. Go out too soon, and you risked running low on fuel or tempting fate with your engine; wait too long, and you risked giving up time for any quick fixes if your engine failed to start. After five minutes, each indicated by a tab disappearing from the top of the clock, the one minute gun fired, and the second hand began to sweep the last minute. At that point, no boats could leave the bank; those still pulling ropes were screwed. Out on the water, with all the engines screaming, the canon could not be heard, and that accounts for the white smoke. Once seen, boats headed to the rendezvous area at one end of the course and positioned themselves for a run at the clock. Often, the clock had only one number, a zero at the top, and the object was to cross the start line at full speed just as the second hand hit zero. Crossing the line before it struck hit zero meant disqualification. Waiting too long meant the rest of the boats were in front, and you were in for a ride in rough water, especially in the turns. Likewise, if you approached the clock too soon and had to back off, boats blasted by on either side, and you were left playing catch-up. Right off, Dad and I were pretty good at hitting the clock; it may have helped that we were pilots and had developed good visual acuity, depth and timing from practicing flight maneuvers, hitting the numbers on landings, and so forth. Or, maybe not.

Either way, all we had at Twin Creeks was the D-hydro Neal. There weren’t enough D boats in either hydro or runabout to have a decent field, so they ran together in one D heat, with two of each. Bill Henderson’s hydro was having problems, however, and Vernon Ashely’s runabout was slower, so it ended up being me in the Neal against Jim Yates in his DeSilva. With true beginner’s luck, I won, but it was close at the end. Having led the entire race, but with Jim just off my shoulder, I drifted a bit wide on the last turn, just enough for him to poke the nose of that runabout between me and the buoy. We came across the finish line neck and neck, and the official gave me the race and consequent trophy; although walking by me later, Jim snarled, “That’s my trophy, and you know it.” Well, I didn’t know it, but he put doubt in my mind—after all, we were eye-to-eye at the finish, and his runabout had a longer snout.

While Dad didn’t drive in our first race, it must have looked like far too much fun to pass on, and that’s when we ended up with Jim’s D-hydro, the Jones cabover, so we could race together in the same heat and thereby increase our odds of winning. We last raced with Jim somewhere in Oklahoma, where he blew his runabout over backwards. The accident roughed him up and gave him second thoughts about racing. It happens, whether boat, motorcycle, or skateboarding, serious accidents sometimes result in serious reflection. Over the years, I flipped my share of boats, usually in the first turn, but had no time to reflect. Being a strong believer in getting back on the horse—and I mean getting right back on that horse—Dad and Uncle Ed had me out for the next heat. While I might have been content to sit in the pits, wet and shaking on a lawn chair, they, after quick verification that I was okay, went immediately to work on the boat, dumping out the water, duct tapping if necessary, drying out the engine, firing it up, and having it ready for the next heat. I was busy helping, so there was little time to reflect and moon over, perhaps, my lucky stars. And one does feel somewhat lucky coming away unscathed from a first turn spill amid a flurry of rooster tails, boats on either side, and boats coming up from behind. (Pictures of Jim's DeSilva, T-84, and coming back wrong side up, Jim at the stern with cigarette in mouth.)

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In 1968 at a race in Rogers, Arkansas, Dad ripped the bottom off the Jones cabover, at least part of it. We were in the same D-hydro heat. Two boats behind Dad in a turn, I saw the cabover go up on its side, come down in a fan of water, but with Dad still in it and in control. Coming out of the turn, I passed him on the straight; he grinned and nodded me forward. With the heat over, he stayed on the course until I was at the bank and out of the Neal, then he headed in, faster than usual, and frantically motioned for us to come. Ed, Bill, Vernon and I sloshed out to meet him. Closer, he began yelling, “Pick up the front! Pick up the front!” We did, and with him laughing and pointing, looked in the boat to see sections of boards missing, just forward of where he knelt to the front of the bow.

We continued to test at Twin Creeks with our racing buddies from Hot Springs, and turned it into fun events with socializing, BBQs, and beer at the end. My high school buddy, Pat Conover, helped in the pits our first couple years, until he got drafted and went in the Navy, and once at Twin Creeks, as either reward or punishment, Dad offered him a ride in one of the D-hydros—the one we rescued from the barn and chicken droppings, along with a runabout. We called that hydro the “Barn Door” for obvious reasons. As with a couple of our early boats, we never knew who built it, but I’m guessing Neal or Jacobsen. It was a good boat and a safe ride, but way, way obsolete. We figured you’d really have to try hard to turn it over. So we sent Conover out, and while he didn’t flip it, he did manage to get thrown out in a turn. After we got him and the Barn Door back to the bank and dried out, Dad asked, “You want to try it again, Pat?” And Conover replied, “No, thanks, Mr. Ketzer. That was good enough.” Dad gave the Barn Door to Vernon Ashley so he could race hydro with us, and Vernon did the best he could with it. (Pictures of the Barn Door all stripped down and then newly finished, testing at Twin Creeks, Vernon Ashley driving, just prior to Conover's ride.)

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In Conover’s defense, about four years prior to that, before we lived at Bass Haven, we lived in another lake home on Hamilton where we had a party barge and a little Ouachita flat-bottom boat with a 15 horse Merc engine, and it was pretty hot for a fishing boat. Conover, and another 8th grade buddy, Larry, and I took the flat-bottom and camped out on a deserted peninsula. The next day we got up and took turns making laps around the bay. Conover took his turn, turned too sharp, and fell out of the boat. Twist throttles on motors back then stayed wherever you put them, so with Conover in the water, the flat-bottom continued to circle and roar with him treading water in the middle. Larry and I screamed, “Swim, Conover, swim!” hoping he would swim toward the bank and out of danger, but every time he made a move, the boat had completed its circle and cut him off. Finally, the boat swamped itself and killed the engine. Conover grabbed the rope and started towing the boat, half full of water, to the bank as we swam out to meet him. So, with that and being tossed out of the Barn Door, Conover probably figured the third time might be the charm, the charm in a negative sense, so he declined another ride in the hydro.

Ketzer

04-08-2014, 04:49 AM

Becoming Members: During the summers of 1968-69, we sought out races on weekends, and left Mom alone to deal with Bass Haven—she was afraid to watch us race and had church, anyway . We traveled around the state and put on shows for small towns like El Dorado, Dumas, Mansfield, and dipped down into Louisiana and up into Missouri. We raced with the Okies, and joined the Oklahoma Boat Racing Association (O.B.R.A.) and newly formed American Outboard Federation (A.O.F.), racing several times on Lakes Eufaula, McAlester and Texoma. This involved getting ahead of the work at Bass Haven, getting the boats and engines ready during the week, loading them up (by hand, of course) and leaving town on Friday after work, unloading and testing on Saturday, racing on Sunday, and then loading it all back up in the late afternoon for the drive back to Hot Springs with dinner at some truck stop along the way, sometimes getting home well after midnight to arise the following morning for work with bruised butts and thighs from being slammed around in boats. (The Bass Haven trailer before we upgraded; pictures at Mansfield, AR., Conover and Eddie Jr., sending me out in the rescued-from-a-barn runabout, builder unknown, with Vernon Ashley going out above me.)

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Although fun, boat racing was turning into work, especially running four boats, each capable, with an engine swap, of running in two different classes. I enjoyed the trip itself, seeing different places and watching people react to our rig. On the road, cars pulled alongside and slowed to look at the boats, maybe give us a wave or a thumbs-up, and at truck stops, people invariably gathered to walk around the trailer. We raced for either trophies or cash prizes, the latter not sufficient to put gas in the boats, let alone the, by then, motorhome that pulled the rig and served as motel for our Ketzer Racing Team, Dad and I being the drivers, and sometimes brother Charlie driving a D-runabout, with Uncle Ed and Vernon Ashley being pit crew, unless Vern brought his own boats. Ed enjoyed sitting on a boat stand, watching the races and smoking his little cigars, but wasn’t interested in racing.

While our motors ran great and did all they could, we understood that our boats were obsolete by several years. What we lacked in speed, though, we made up for in consistency, Dad and Uncle Ed being excellent aircraft mechanics, a trade where quality is a given and “zero defects” the mantra. Our engines never failed to start, to get us on the course before the one minute gun, and, unlike some, seldom shot craps during the race. Also, we managed to stay right-side-up for the most part. So, with a racer unable to start and watching from the bank, a boat with a crapped-out engine floating in the infield, a flip here and a flip there, we sometimes found ourselves going home with trophies or checks. (A few newspaper clippings from those early years.)

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As I said before, I got wet a few times, but that was years later in the 1970s when we acquired newer equipment and started going faster. I never flipped the old Neal, but once came half out of it in a turn. Still gripping the throttle and steering wheel, I managed to crawl back in without losing my place, to the delight of Dad, Uncle Ed and Vernon. While Dad never flipped in a race (and I mean never, ever), I couldn’t quite determine where a boat’s edge resided until I exceeded it, or almost did, but was good-to-go after that. Still, I’m sure older or more seasoned drivers wished I had done my edge-finding somewhere else. I could get a feel for a boat on test runs, feeling it on the straights, cranking it hard around turns, but it wasn’t the same as being in a race with a full field, everyone pushing hard, eyes on the prize. Dad came out of a boat but once, and that was during practice at Twin Creeks when another boat got too close and clipped him. For me, learning to race in the Neal and then racing something like a Warren, a Goff-Hagness or a Butts Aerowing, was similar to, in flying, going from tricycle gear to a tail dragger, which I did learning in a Cessna 150 and then attempting to fly our little Aeronca Chief—I thought I knew how to fly, and I couldn’t keep the Aeronca going straight down the runway on takeoff. Ground loops on landing? Never heard of such a thing in the Cessna 150.

Accidents sometimes resulted in serious injury, sometimes death. In Oklahoma, we raced against the likes of Dudley Malone, Clyde Bayer and Kid Smith. Kid was a Native American and a really nice guy. He had a little boy who came to the races with him. One day, during a lull with no boats allowed on the course, a rainbow broke out, and when the boy asked how it happened, Kid softly explained in detail how rainbows are born, take shape, and fade away, while boat racers sat quietly wearing Mona Lisa smiles. Kid died boat racing not long afterwards. Years later, Jerry Waldman, a hydro driver, whom we later raced against, also died racing. There were memorial races for him at Diamondhead in Hot Springs and racers came from all over; the Jerry Waldman Memorial Races were some of the largest boat races ever held in Arkansas. Dad and all our Hot Springs racing buddies in the Razorback Boat Racing Club helped with the planning and organization.

Generally, boat racers excelled at avoiding drivers in the water, but sometimes, as in the chaos of the first turn and blinded by rooster tails, such accidents were unavoidable, save to stop racing altogether. Drivers who hit and injured another felt much guilt, as did my brother Charlie who, not seeing him until it was too late, ran over a driver in a turn, the propeller chewing up the guy’s arm pretty badly—that was when we raced on an inlet from the Mississippi; can’t remember the name of the little town. On other hand, I’ve been in a turn with a boat mere feet away, watched it roll, and raced on. That’s what you do: it’s racing. If it looked bad, though, I slowed, as did others, and even circled back to check on the driver. The procedure was, if you flipped with no damage done, you raised your arms to indicate, “I’m okay! Race on!” and, of course, to make yourself visible and augment the orange life jacket and helmet racers were later required to wear. If no arms came up, the race stopped. But, I’ll admit that I corked up from the submerged tumble with arms raised, not knowing whether or not I was damaged, but certain I would be if one of those other boats hit me. (A few membership cards from different boat racing organizations.)

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Master Oil Racing Team

04-08-2014, 07:20 PM

You and I think the same way Steve. The way your are telling your story is in my mind as if I were one of your pit crew. It's just like I remember. The same time, same things going on, but just a different locale. I love it, and the photos that show what you guys were doing. When I first saw those pictures of your Dad standing by the airplane and some of those earlier pictures I thought to myself "he kind of looks like a movie star from the 40's". In fact your Dad looks a little bit like a young Spencer Tracy.

When you posted your membership cards of your boat racing affiliations, I thought to myself...Steve is a good boat racing packrat like myself. I was planning on the same thing for my Baldy thread, but I was waiting until I got to the year of the oldest surviving card, then post them as the years came up. I would like to talk to you. PM me or E mail me your phone number if you want to talk.

Ketzer

04-09-2014, 03:39 AM

Thanks, Wayne. Glad you're enjoying it. I'll shoot you an email here in a bit. I'm still working my way through your story; I'm around page 35. So I can safely say, you have way more racing memorabilia than I pack-ratted, but then you guys started earlier and kept going after we bailed out.

Ketzer

04-09-2014, 03:48 PM

Wayne, you're a popular guy: Your mailbox is full. Mine is empty, so email me when you get a chance, and we'll link up.

Master Oil Racing Team

04-09-2014, 07:25 PM

Sorry Steve. I thought I had cleared it out except for some I needed to get back to. I haven't had a PM in a while. Maybe that's why.

With this new format, I can't find any PM's. I'm not sure about the emails. BRF has inspired me to learn a lot about the internet, but when changes suddenly confront me, it sometimes takes awhile before I figure out which way North is again. As a pilot I know you would want to know the barometric pressure and elevation before you reset out your elevation before takeoff.

Ketzer

04-10-2014, 06:36 AM

Miss Mouse: My racing season was cut short in July of 1969. I knew it was coming. Right after high school graduation, I received Uncle Sam’s greetings and my draft notice. At Dad’s suggestion, I beat feet down to the U.S.A.F. and talked to the recruiter. Would they promise me a slot in Air Traffic Control? You bet! No sweat! So I signed up for four years with induction in July. Back then, with Vietnam still hot and no enlistment contracts, recruiters could, would and did lie. With my background, the Army recruiter promised to put me in a helicopter “right away”—that probably wasn’t a lie. But I wasn’t too sure about helicopters, and neither was Dad. In 1965 with Mom and Dad on a trip to visit the relatives in Brooklyn, we had flown in one of those Pan American choppers that fly between airports in NYC. While the view of Manhattan was amazing, that chopper shook, rattled and vibrated like it was coming apart, and was so noisy we had to shout to talk—it even had Dad raising his eyebrows. Wings that rotate? That can’t be right. Whereas, fixed wing aircraft were…sssssmooooooth, baby. Anyway, the Air Force required a college degree to fly for them, and since I barely got out of high school, ATC was the next best thing.

With me gone and Dad hitting every boat race he could, Bass Haven bit the dust. He sold it and had a house built in a new subdivision a bit farther out 70W where all the streets were named for aircraft manufacturers. Uncle Ed and my grandmother also bought houses there and lived on Cessna Lane, while Mom and Dad had theirs built on Douglas Drive, of all places. I received pictures of the construction while at basic training in San Antonio. Yep, San Antonio…basic training…July and August. Woof. As soon as the house was finished, Dad and his boat racing buddies began constructing a shop in the back, nearly as big as the house. Beautiful work came out of that shop for the next twenty years: boats, engines, motorcycles, Chevy vans and Ford Falcons, to list a few projects. Still, I wish he could have held on to Bass Haven; it was a huge chunk of lakefront right on 70W, probably worth a few mil today. (The Razorback Boat Racing Club helping Dad build his new shop. L-R kneeling: Vernon Ashley, Mickey McGuire and Steve Ketzer. Standing: Tommy Goslee, Bill Henderson, Eddie Jr., and Uncle Ed. And a picture of Steve with his Warren; Conover in the water, probably taking a pee.)

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About to finish basic, I got my assignment. I would be, not an Air Traffic Controller, but a Protective Equipment Specialist. My drill instructor, when quizzed, said he thought it was one of those guys who paint safety lines on floors in hangars and shops to keep people from getting into dangerous areas. Well, what the heck, I figured they wouldn’t have to teach me how to paint. As it turned out, Protective Equipment was also known as Life Support, which involved fitting, maintaining, and instructing pilots on everything that touched their body: helmet, oxygen mask, G-suit, survival vest, .38 special, parachute, and the survival seat pack that contained all kinds of stuff, including a one man life raft, and sat directly on top of the ejection seat. So after a trip home and a boat race—I’ve forgotten where—it was off to Tech School at Chanute AFB in Illinois, where I filled out my “Dream Sheet” and requested Barksdale AFB in Shreveport.

After marching through snow to and from class for a few months, the assignments came in, and I got, not Shreveport, but Phan Rang, Vietnam. A popular song at the time went, “And it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for? Don’t tell me, I don’t give a damn, next stop is Vietnam,” by Country Joe and the Fish. In fact, while at Aunt Helen and Uncle Larry’s in Sacramento before flying up to McCord AFB to cross the pond, I saw Country Joe sing that song on Johnny Carson’s, Tonight Show. It was quite a send-off. Thank you, Country Joe. It was no better coming back, probably worse as we went into Cambodia while I was there, Kent State happened back home, our cities were burning, and so on, all of which I read in “The Stars and Stripes,” thinking, “What the….” But anyway. Thank you, female college student who called me a pig (we had to travel in uniform at that time). I should have asked her, “And how did you fare in the draft, Miss?” I recently read an article that stated the bad treatment returning troops received while passing through California was vastly overstated, if not in many cases untrue. Don’t believe the revisionist history. It happened, and it was not nice. In the words of Forrest Gump, “And that’s all I care to say about that.”

Otherwise, no complaints. Life Support was a cushy job on a relatively cushy air base in Vietnam on the South China Sea. I went to Hong Kong on R&R, and went TDY to Clark Air Base in the Philippines to run through Jungle Survival School, a requirement for fighter jocks and a Bennie for Life Support personnel. I bought a Super 8 camera and movie projector. Dad sent 8 mm boat racing movies, and Mom wrote every day and occasionally sent boxes of homemade Toll House chocolate chip cookies, my favorite, especially the way she made them, a little overcooked and kind of crispy. (Pictures of my digs at Phan Rang, one of our F-100s, i.e., “The Hun”, and me on a once-in-a-blue-moon day off, up on a hill above the base.)

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From the movies, I could tell this much as it pertained to boat racing: Dad was back home kickin’ it up a notch. Gone was the Neal and Jones and the rest of our obsolete fleet, and in their place a Warren, that he got while I was in Tech School, a couple Sid-Craft hydros and a DeSilva runabout. And, from the newspaper clippings, Dad was doing good. A greater change was that he was transitioning from gas to Alky in the form of Merc flathead engines, but still running both, burning the candle at both ends, so to speak. Dad was on a roll with the Razorback thing and naming the boats after pig parts: we had a “Ham Bone” hydro and a “Pork Chop” runabout. He wrote and asked me to name the Sid-Craft B-hydro, and I broke the tradition, coming up with “Miss Mouse.” (Dad’s favorite newspaper clipping and Mickey's least.)

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Getting short in Vietnam, I filled out my dream sheet and again requested Barksdale and a few other bases close to home. They gave me Lockbourne AFB outside of Columbus, Ohio, a Strategic Air Command base where I would work in Life Support for a wing of KC-135 refueling tankers. Well, it wasn’t Louisiana, but closer than Vietnam. The first boat race I went to in 1971 was the Southern Championships held at Vicksburg, and I’ve forgotten how we did with everything, but I won the Pro B-hydro race in Miss Mouse running a hot little B-flathead. Arthur McMeans, Jr. (Little Arthur) also raced in B-hydro with a Konig. He couldn’t get out of the pits for the first heat, which I won, but he got out for the second, and I came in second, but won the overall. (Later pictures of Miss Mouse running a C-Service at Alex: Dad getting weighed and going out.)

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Ketzer

04-12-2014, 01:11 PM

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Brothers: Whether the gas burning Mercs, the flatheads or the rotary valve Konigs to come, I didn’t learn squat about working on engines; largely, because I didn’t have to. Dad and Uncle Ed already had it figured out and done by the time I strolled in. Around the Ketzer shop, if you hesitated a moment, or had to “get around to it,” well, you could forget it, because it was already done, and done perfectly. And, when projects were on-going, you never walked in to ask, “Do you need any help?” You would be ignored or given a shake of the head. Nope, you walked in, sized up the situation, looked at what was being done, considered what needed to be done next, and started doing it. Then, with everyone at their task, conversation and banter would resume, and Mom might walk up from the house to bring coffee or glasses of ice tea. If you couldn’t figure out what was needed next, you started sweeping the floor or greasing lower units or something. Before long, one of them would call out, “Stevie, come here and hold this,” or, “Stevie, go get me one of those…” That was working with Dad and Uncle Ed. I learned a great deal from those guys, but only a fraction of what I should have. (Steve Ketzer in his shop on Douglas Drive and one after he traded for the Marineaux equipment.)

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There’s an art to helping. After many years, my wife, Vicki, has yet to learn it: “No, Vik. Hold the flashlight so ‘I’ can see, not so ‘you’ can see.” Or, backing up trailers that I’m not too good at to begin with, I won’t be able to find her in the mirror, and if I do, she’s back there with hands all a’flutter like she’s trying to explain Chinese algebra in sign language. But after Dad and Uncle Ed found each other in 1965, Uncle Ed with his wife and two boys, along with my newly found grandmother, moved down from Cincinnati to Hot Springs, and soon the relatives (Dad’s sister, Pauline, her husband, Ernie, two girls and two boys, one of them Mikey) from Brooklyn also moved to Hot Springs. They were all fun and nice people. But of the lot, Dad and his brother Ed from then on were like “peas and carrots.” Between working at the airport together all day, and then working up in Dad’s shop until 9 or 10 PM, and then running off on the weekends to boat race, they spent far more time with each other than they did their own wives. (Hot Springs Sentinel Record newspaper photo of Uncle Ed Ketzer, Steve Ketzer, and Vernon Ashley—I have no clue what they meant by “outside right.” Ed is on the left.)

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In Cincinnati, Uncle Ed had worked as a mechanic for Ford, and he was a great automotive mechanic—he bailed me out many times, and would drive halfway across the country to come save me. In Hot Springs, Dad got him a job at Futrell’s, working on airplanes under his supervision until Ed built up enough time to test for his A&P (it was A&E when Dad took the exam, the E for engine, but later changed to P for Powerplant). Someone, I think Futrell, with Ed standing there, asked Dad, “Do you think you can turn him into an aircraft mechanic?” And Dad answered, “Hell, yes, as long as I can get him to throw away those big hammers.” Going from automotive to aircraft was going from half-inch drive to quarter-inch drive (instruments and avionics even smaller) and absolutely nothing was ever forced, i.e., no big hammers. Well, Uncle Ed turned out to be a great aircraft mechanic, and a pilot, too. His specialty was overhauling engines, either Lycoming or Continental; he turned out a bunch, and I helped with the teardowns, Gunking, cleaning and painting: Lycoming grey, Continental gold…orange around the base of the cylinders if the walls had been chromed. Very pretty and such a unique smell when they cooked off chemicals after the first ground run.

It took Uncle Ed a few tries to pass the A&P writtens—General, Airframe, and Powerplant—as he wasn’t a great written test-taker (That’s one thing I am good at, taking written exams. Through college and later taking course after required course at the FAA Academy in OKC, I wanted to make one of the highest scores, naturally, but more important to me was being the first to finish, and finishing as quickly as possible. I was racing! So I kicked the mind into overdrive and roared through the test—first thought, best thought—and then casually walked up and tossed it on the instructor’s desk while other students looked up in shock: “Damn you, Ketzer!” ). But the oral and practical exams were easy for Uncle Ed. Still, I wish I had been in the room with him and the FAA’s Designated Mechanic Examiner for the orals, because when you asked Ed a question, you might have to wait five minutes for an answer, but you’d eventually get one, well thought out and correct. So I could just see Uncle Ed chewing on his cigar and staring at the examiner after each question. I often joked that I would ask him a question, go get a cup of coffee, and come back for the answer.

As for Dad, it sometimes irritated me that he was so good. When he bailed me out, I complained that he knew so much, and that solutions came so easy for him. He countered that he didn’t always know all that stuff and that he had to read the manuals and study, which was what I should do (instead of, I’ll guess, via osmosis, my preferred method). That was true; he did study. I still have a couple of his notepads from the 1950s when he was working toward his A&E, and I can see him studying and learning the rudiments, all in his textbook cursive. But he was just so damn fast, quick to understand, to get it. You could almost see the gears spinning and lining up in his head, like some kind of burly Data from Star Trek, and then, to mix metaphors, a 100 Watt light bulb coming on. Whereas, for me, when it came to things of a mechanical nature, my mind was like a three-way bulb, except it went up to 100 from one watt, one click at a time. For Dad, reading a wiring schematic was like “Dick and Jane,” whereas for me, even after years as an A&P, IA, Repair Station Inspector, and FAA Airworthiness Inspector, it was (is) like wading through Kierkegaard or Thorstein Veblen. (Some pages from Steve Ketzer’s old notepads.)

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Not to speak too much of myself, although it’s already too late for that, what I personally missed and needed was the schooling to understand theory, because I was too lazy to do it on my own. Of course, I studied and learned enough to pass the tests (with high scores), but just enough. From Dad and Uncle Ed, I learned what to do and how to do it, but I didn’t always know why I was doing it. You can qualify to take the A&P exams three ways: Military experience, going to a FAA certified school (usually two years), or by logging thirty months of practical experience under a certified mechanic, the latter being what Uncle Ed and I did under Dad’s supervision, but Ed was a natural mechanic, and I wasn’t. Still, I ended up being pretty darn good! (Har!) Many, many years later as an FAA inspector, I had young people come into my office with inadequate documentation and frightened eyes to request approval to take the A&P exam based on practical experience. With the meager documentation, I was compelled to quiz them and then call their A&P supervisors and quiz them. If they had the right answers, I’d throw in the towel and say “I am going to approve you to take the exams, but before I do, I’d like to tell you a little story about theory.”

It is interesting, though, how American boys, and perhaps boys everywhere, once learned their father’s trade, whether me in aviation, Wayne Baldwin in the oil industry, my buddy, Shorty, who became a brick layer like his daddy, or other high school friends who followed their father’s trade into plumbing, electrical work, transmission overhaul, or what-have-you. No more. No more. (A few more pages from Steve Ketzer’s notebook.)

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Ketzer

04-15-2014, 02:12 AM

Soooie-Pig: Out of Lockbourne AFB during 1971-72, in addition to the Southern Championship at Vicksburg, I was able to attend a couple other races, I believe one at Alex and the other on a river at St. Claire, Mo., west of St. Louis. Of course, Dad, Uncle Ed and Vernon were hitting every race they could. It probably wasn’t wise for me to drive at major events like Alex, being rusty and all, but I did. For the race in St. Claire, I jumped into a van with a few of my Air Force buddies after work on Friday and we took off. The most memorable part of the trip was driving through Illinois where we encountered migrating Monarch butterflies, thousands of them. We were in awe until they started splattering on the windshield, so much so, that we had to pull over and clean the beauties off.

Once at St. Claire, I hopped in the camper with the Ketzer Racing Team and let my buddies fight for space in the van. As to the boat races, I can’t remember what I raced or how I finished (probably not too good, or I would remember), but I remember the first turn was just before a bridge, but especially, there was a boat that Dad and I just fell in love with, a Goff-Hagness owned by Bill Van; it was fast, and looked so pretty on the water, the bow kicked up high on the straights, floating, with just a little rock from side to side. It had tall sides and a windshield—most unusual back then—and the plexiglass was green, so we called it the Green Hornet. We talked about that boat quite a bit, and before I left for Keflavik, Iceland, Dad had it in our fleet, still with the green windshield, but painted in our racing yellow with blue trim, L-113 on either side of the bow, and on the side, Soooie-Pig. (Pictures given earlier of the Goff-Hagness, the first I think taken at St. Claire in 1972, and then a year or so later with Roger Purtee's "Jolly Roger" in the foreground.)

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While we were transitioning to Sids and flatheads, many were moving on to pickleforks and Konigs, but, by then, Dad knew who was who and what was what, so what he bought or traded for was pretty hot stuff, and we, while still not front runners, were competitive. I was really appreciating the Pro Class; it was faster, I liked the flatheads, the look and sound of them with their bell pipes, and I loved that alky, the smell of it in the pits or when crossing a rooster tail and getting a snoot full; I liked the way it turned to milk when spilled in the water, and even enjoyed measuring out the castor and mixing in five gallon jugs, sloshing it around.

At that time I decided neither runabout boats, nor C-Service engines were my cup of tea, although I continued to race both. While it might look scary from the bank, and indeed was equally dangerous, if not more so, in a hydroplane, the view was of nothing but water, while in a runabout, kneeling in the back with that long, pointy bow in front, you could see it, often un-commanded, jumping and dancing all over the place, rising way up in the air and slamming back down. But a hydro was somewhat like ridding an inner tube behind a fast boat, and about as sensitive to body position and shifting weight.

As for the old Evinrude engines, if you enjoyed having a rope pulled from your hands or catching fire while attempting to start the monster, then C-Service was the way to go. Priming a C-Service was like playing an odd musical instrument; there was a certain technique and rhythm required. With the kill switch off, you put a loop of rope around the flywheel, tugged until you hit compression, let the compression pull the rope back, and then tugged again. It went something like, “Cha-chunk, cha-chunk, cha-chunk, cha-chunk…” While doing this, either you or someone else had a hand cupped over the carburetor’s throat. If you lost rhythm, the rope fell and got tangled around the shaft. Successfully going through a number of those “Cha-chunks,” you pulled it through to get fuel into the cylinders, and then you were ready to make it hot. Oh, and the fuel that didn’t get sucked into the cylinders dribbled into the boat.

The old Evinrude had a propensity to backfire, and when it did, the rope and its wooden handle departed your hands in a hurry to fly through the air, sometimes in a circle if still wound around the flywheel, to slap hell from the poor souls who held up the back of the boat. Not necessarily worse, but also a problem if it backfired, was the boat catching fire. As alky burns cleanly, and in the sunlight, invisibly, you might be on fire and not know it until you noticed hair disappearing from your arms or felt heat obviously not provided by the Sun. Mostly, Dad raced the C-Service—he loved them—and let me run, what he called, the “hot stuff,” the C-flathead and later Konigs, but when I was off with the Air Force or later in college, he raced them all and did well.

Coming from a fast and loose fighter squadron in Vietnam to the strictness of Strategic Air Command back in the states was driving me nuts. So I requested transfer, again to Barksdale at Shreveport, but to make sure I got out of there, I also volunteered for places I figured no one else wanted to go: Turkey, Alaska, and Iceland. Orders came through for Keflavik, Iceland, a Naval Air Station that also had a contingent of Marines, an Air Force fighter squadron that raced up to intercept Russian Bear testing our air space, and a couple Air Force AWACs, back then using the old “Connie.” I would do Life Support for both fighter and AWAC, but I would not boat race for the remainder of ’72 and ’73. Dad and the Ketzer Racing Team, still racing both gas and Alky, did and wrote to tell me about it. I sent money to buy a new Grant tower housing for the C-flathead (my meagre contribution). The cast tower housing was also the fuel tank, which got the fuel out of the boat, and moved the CG aft: Soooie-Pig! (Steve Ketzer driving Soooie-Pig with a gas burner, and a faded but one of the few pictures with all three Ketzers—Steve Ketzer, Steve Jr., and Ed—with MX in the background.)

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Up at 0300 this morning for the lunar eclipse: Very nice view from Florida of the "blood red" Moon, orange Mars, and stars.

Bill Van Steenwyk

04-15-2014, 12:30 PM

I remember Steve Ketzer as being a real southern gentleman and always fun to be around. There was a race in Hot Springs with a lot of foreign drivers one year. They had a drivers party, out in the middle of no where, in a club house. There was a terrific band and Steve got up to sing. Even the foreign drivers stopped what they were doing and listened to him. He really got that house rocking!. Miss you, Steve! Eileen Van Steenwyk

F-12

04-15-2014, 01:17 PM

Where in Florida do you live, Steve?

Ketzer

04-15-2014, 03:36 PM

Now, Eileen, he weren't no country gentleman. Why, he were a Yankee born! Probably just trying to score points with you while Bill weren't lookin'. Yeah, I remember him singing at the Diamondhead race in Hot Springs. That was fun. He had a great blues/jazz voice and played great bass, too. After the war, he played in a jazz combo in Hot Springs that toured into Texas. Then he went back into the service and got picked up by Special Services while in Okinawa, played in a combo and acted at the Ernie Pyle Theatre in Tokyo, and went by ship down to the Philippines, entertaining troops at stops along the way. Here are a few pictures of him playing in Japan, the first in full makeup. Great hearing from you, Eileen!

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Ketzer

04-15-2014, 03:43 PM

I live in the swamps in Hernando, Charley, with all the other poor, old folks. Do you happen to remember who raced F-117? Vernon Ashley raced their boat one time. Here's a picture.

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Master Oil Racing Team

04-15-2014, 06:34 PM

I can't get any of the pictures to open on your last two posts Steve. Where was that picture taken with our trailer in the background. I've been racking my brain and can't figure where it was. What's it say on the side of the O3 boat? Is that one of Spec's rigs?. By the look of the paint scheme on our trailer and the C Marchetti hydro on top I'm guessing 1971.

Been on jobs so I haven't scanned the Roostertail yet. Maybe tomorrow. Was good to talk to you.

Ketzer

04-16-2014, 04:33 AM

Thanks, Wayne. No pictures. Mm-mm-mm. That was the first time I tried attaching pictures to a "quick reply"; don't know what I did wrong or how that works, but I'll attach them below in another post. I'm not positive where that picture was taken, either. As usual, I have no date or place on the back, but I thought Alex. Yeah, it was either '71 or '72, because my hair was still military length. Not sure about the 03.

Ketzer

04-16-2014, 04:50 AM

Here are the pictures for Eileen and Charley Bradley mentioned above in the last few posts. Thanks, Wayne, for pointing it out. So it's Steve Ketzer in Japan, circa 1947, and Vernon Ashley driving F-117 and cousin Mikey holding up the stern on the right hand side; not sure who the other guys are or where it was taken.

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Ketzer

04-17-2014, 03:55 AM

Soooie-Pig, Cont.: The bells on our C-flathead were just a little smaller in diameter and thicker, due to the casting, than most flatheads—I don’t know who made them—but it had a higher pitch. There could be several flatheads out running, but you could hear ours distinctly if it was on the course pushing Soooie-Pig. The green windshield went away after I raced Soooie-Pig for the first time, I think at Monroe, LA. I hit the clock well, hit the first turn in second place, and then I hit the water, but not before busting through the green plexiglass (thereafter clear, aviation grade) and ripping out the throttle, although it and the cable remained attached to the boat. Dad and Uncle Ed got Soooie-Pig dried out and patched up, and I was out for the second heat. I finished the race, but not in the money. Interesting how those flips go. For me, there was a fraction of slo-mo when I felt the sponson dig and the boat lift up, and seemed to have plenty of time to think, “Uh-oh, here I go,” and then there I went, into the hyper-speed of being thrown out and tumbling beneath the water; that is, going from all that sensation, sound, color and smell into the darkness beneath the surface and then corking up, eyes like Kennedy half-dollars, back into it all in a flash. Very exciting stuff, but not the type of excitement anyone but a fool would desire.

Yeah, I flipped Soooie-Pig on my first shot, but in my defense and according to Bill Van, that Goff-Hagness had a history of being upside-down and had the patches to prove it. Bill said the right hand sponson was built a touch shorter, shallower than the left, specifically so as not to dig in the turns, but, oddly, seemed to have the opposite effect. Also, the difference in sponson height accounted for the rocking motion on the straights as it spilled off air from one side to the other, which never proved a problem going at our speeds, but had it gone considerably faster, again, according to Bill, that rocking would have gotten out of control with disastrous results on a straightaway. One of Bill’s friends nicknamed the boat “Coffin Craft,” due to its design (the interior was about the size of a coffin) as well as its history of accidents. But there’s always a but, and here it is: Dad, true to form, never flipped Soooie-Pig, and he raced it much more than I did. Maybe she just wanted someone who knew how to drive her, and, apparently, Dad was that someone.

So I went to Iceland, and suddenly Iceland was in the news, but it had nothing to do with me. Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky were playing chess in Reykjavik while I was in Keflavik doing my Life Support thing and eating in the Navy chow hall which served much local fare, including lamb, fish, and chicken fried rabbit (the Navy has the best food in the military). I also became a Marine while there, or at least an augmentee. The Jarheads had nothing else to do but train and wait for the Russians to attack, so they figured they’d snatch up enough Flyboys for a backup platoon and turn us into Marines—they had no idea how inept Flyboys were at warfighting, at least, warfighting on the ground. I spent a year in Vietnam and didn’t carry a weapon; then there I was carrying a weapon in Iceland, a regular Barney Fife.

Also, during that year plus in Keflavik, a volcano on the island of Heimaey blew its top, and you could see the tower of white smoke from the base. That made world news, along with the Paris Peace Accords. Otherwise, I enjoyed the Northern Lights and all the library time. Most troops hated Iceland—but I enjoyed it. No snakes, spiders, chiggers, ticks, or sweltering heat and humidity: How can you not like that? Upon leaving Iceland, I would be discharged, and I had a month’s worth of leave built up that could have been parlayed into a trip to the U.S. to visit the folks and go to a few boat races, but Europe was so close! So with a military hop to Frankfurt , a Eurail Pass in my pocket, and a mere 500 bucks, I toured Europe for a month, sleeping on the train, in youth hostels or pensions that cost just a few bucks a night. After visiting eight or so countries, I caught a military hop out of Glasgow back to Keflavik with no more than two bucks in my pocket.

Back home, in 1972-73, the Ketzer Racing Team was “driving on,” having fun, and making friends. Along with the Kansas City and St. Louis folks, Dad got to know more racers from Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, including Jerry McMillian from DeWitt, Arkansas, Joe Bolton and his son in Texarkana, and Arthur McMeans, Little Arthur, and Lyndol Reid from Louisiana. I’ll make an addendum later if I can figure out where they raced and how they did.

(Steve Ketzer with Joe and Bobby Bolton.)
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("Big" Arthur McMeans getting ready to go for a ride in one of our boats, Mickey McGuire and Steve Ketzer getting him ready.)
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(An old picture of some, even then, old boat racers: Arthur McMeans and Tommy Goslee, can't remember the others.)
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John Schubert T*A*R*T

04-17-2014, 06:15 AM

Soooie-Pig, Cont.: The bells on our C-flathead were just a little smaller in diameter and thicker, due to the casting, than most flatheads—I don’t know who made them—but it had a higher pitch. There could be several flatheads out running, but you could hear ours distinctly if it was on the course pushing Soooie-Pig. The green windshield went away after I raced Soooie-Pig for the first time, I think at Monroe, LA. I hit the clock well, hit the first turn in second place, and then I hit the water, but not before busting through the green plexiglass (thereafter clear, aviation grade) and ripping out the throttle, although it and the cable remained attached to the boat. Dad and Uncle Ed got Soooie-Pig dried out and patched up, and I was out for the second heat. I finished the race, but not in the money. Interesting how those flips go. For me, there was a fraction of slo-mo when I felt the sponson dig and the boat lift up, and seemed to have plenty of time to think, “Uh-oh, here I go,” and then there I went, into the hyper-speed of being thrown out and tumbling beneath the water; that is, going from all that sensation, sound, color and smell into the darkness beneath the surface and then corking up, eyes like Kennedy half-dollars, back into it all in a flash. Very exciting stuff, but not the type of excitement anyone but a fool would desire.

Yeah, I flipped Soooie-Pig on my first shot, but in my defense and according to Bill Van, that Goff-Hagness had a history of being upside-down and had the patches to prove it. Bill said the right hand sponson was built a touch shorter, shallower than the left, specifically so as not to dig in the turns, but, oddly, seemed to have the opposite effect. Also, the difference in sponson height accounted for the rocking motion on the straights as it spilled off air from one side to the other, which never proved a problem going at our speeds, but had it gone considerably faster, again, according to Bill, that rocking would have gotten out of control with disastrous results on a straightaway. One of Bill’s friends nicknamed the boat “Coffin Craft,” due to its design (the interior was about the size of a coffin) as well as its history of accidents. But there’s always a but, and here it is: Dad, true to form, never flipped Soooie-Pig, and he raced it much more than I did. Maybe she just wanted someone who knew how to drive her, and, apparently, Dad was that someone.

So I went to Iceland, and suddenly Iceland was in the news, but it had nothing to do with me. Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky were playing chess in Reykjavik while I was in Keflavik doing my Life Support thing and eating in the Navy chow hall which served much local fare, including lamb, fish, and chicken fried rabbit (the Navy has the best food in the military). I also became a Marine while there, or at least an augmentee. The Jarheads had nothing else to do but train and wait for the Russians to attack, so they figured they’d snatch up enough Flyboys for a backup platoon and turn us into Marines—they had no idea how inept Flyboys were at warfighting, at least, warfighting on the ground. I spent a year in Vietnam and didn’t carry a weapon; then there I was carrying a weapon in Iceland, a regular Barney Fife.

Also, during that year plus in Keflavik, a volcano on the island of Heimaey blew its top, and you could see the tower of white smoke from the base. That made world news, along with the Paris Peace Accords. Otherwise, I enjoyed the Northern Lights and all the library time. Most troops hated Iceland—but I enjoyed it. No snakes, spiders, chiggers, ticks, or sweltering heat and humidity: How can you not like that? Upon leaving Iceland, I would be discharged, and I had a month’s worth of leave built up that could have been parlayed into a trip to the U.S. to visit the folks and go to a few boat races, but Europe was so close! So with a military hop to Frankfurt , a Eurail Pass in my pocket, and a mere 500 bucks, I toured Europe for a month, sleeping on the train, in youth hostels or pensions that cost just a few bucks a night. After visiting eight or so countries, I caught a military hop out of Glasgow back to Keflavik with no more than two bucks in my pocket.

Back home, in 1972-73, the Ketzer Racing Team was “driving on,” having fun, and making friends. Along with the Kansas City and St. Louis folks, Dad got to know more racers from Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, including Jerry McMillian from DeWitt, Arkansas, Joe Bolton and his son in Texarkana, and Arthur McMeans, Little Arthur, and Lyndol Reid from Louisiana. I’ll make an addendum later if I can figure out where they raced and how they did.

(Steve Ketzer with Joe Bolton and Joe's son, can't remember his name.)
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("Big" Arthur McMeans getting ready to go for a ride in one of our boats, Mickey McGuire and Steve Ketzer getting him ready.)
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(An old picture of some, even then, old boat racers: Arthur McMeans and Tommy Goslee, can't remember the others.)
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The guy in the lower right sitting in the folding chair looks like Walt Blankenstein.

F-12

04-17-2014, 08:05 AM

Don't think Walt had black rimmed glasses......

Master Oil Racing Team

04-17-2014, 08:00 PM

It's not Walt John. I never new Arthur McMeans, but I know his son Jr. I have pics of him at Diamondhead which I will post later.

Bill Van Steenwyk

04-18-2014, 08:35 AM

Steve-I just read your post about going to Vietnam. My brother was a F-4 pilot at Cam Rahn Bay during that period. I was about 18 and living with my parents. He said the same thing about how he was treated when he got home. People were so mean to him when he got back. Spit on him when he was walking through the airport. We had a welcome home party for him and his best friend from high school came up to him and called him a Baby killer. I told the guy to get his *** out of the house! I was in my first year of college and there were war protests every day. Loved and supported my brother but thought the govt. handled it very badly. They haven't changed, have they? Glad you made it back in one piece.

Eileen Van Steenwyk

smittythewelder

04-18-2014, 11:53 AM

What an outstanding storyteller you are, sir; this is a fascinating thread!

FWIW, back a couple of pages you have photos of a boat you called "The Barn Door," and wondered what it was and where it came from. It looks very much like a version of the Hal Kelly plans-built "Wetback." All of the Wetbacks I ever saw (and I helped build a couple) were 9'10" A/B Stock models, but the boat in your photographs is plainly larger than that. It might be that Hal Kelly offered a set of plans for a larger version, or maybe your boat had been scaled-up by the builder, whoever he was.

Love to see all the photos of round-bow hydros, which for my money were far prettier than today's boats. The Goff-Hagness boats (nearly all were hydros, though there were two or three alky runabouts) were absolutely gorgeous, still a high point of plywood boatbuilding craftsmanship by Larry Goff of Tacoma, WA. The joinery of the multi-strip deck, designed to accomodate the compound curve of the bow area, was so beautiful that I hated to see them finished with anything but varnish!! Ron Hagness, running a very strong D Looper had some deck-to-deck battles with Howard Anderson in his Marchetti, also running a Quincy, in the late Sixties.

Love the airplane photos, too. About fifteen years ago I just missed a chance to get a nice C-190 at a good price, right before all small airplane prices in the States shot up when the Brits and Europeans started buying them up. Oh well, the price of av-gas has gotten so high now that a big tub like a C-190 would be a pretty price ride. A shame.

Ketzer

04-18-2014, 12:06 PM

Thanks, Bill Van. Amazing how they change history, huh? And I agree with you and Wayne: Politicians fought that war from their desks, and lost it. I’ve got to tell you, though, I have such admiration and love for fighter jocks like your brother. Being in Life Support, I had coffee ready for them when they came in all bleary eyed in the morning, and was the last to see them before they headed back to the hooch after a mission. I hung out in the pilot’s lounge with them and watched mission films, took their abuse, and gave them abuse. They were so fearless and so much fun. I lost a couple while I was there. One, a little 1st Lt. we nicknamed “Frenchie” completed all his missions and was on a C-130 to Cam Ranh Bay to catch his flight back to “The World,” and the C-130 got shot down. Broke out hearts. Another, a major, got shot down during a mission, and his parachute got hung up on a tall tree. The tree lowering device (part of the parachute harness), either didn’t work, or the enemy was near, so he popped the clips on the harness, fell , and broke his neck. That broke our hearts, too. I lost a pilot in Iceland, as well, but we never knew why. He went up on a mission, chasing Russians, and never came back; crashed or punched out over the North Atlantic somewhere, but we never found him. Anyway, with all that sad stuff, it was great to hear from you, Bill Van. Dad thought you were, in his words, “The Cat’s ***.”

Ketzer

04-18-2014, 12:18 PM

Hey, thanks, Smitty! A Wetback, huh? That's great, and glad you like the story, but don't expect too much more. I've only got a short story going here. Wayne Baldwin's got the novel. As to general aviation these days, Smitty, do a homebuilt that runs on auto gas. You're a welder, you can do it!

Bill Van Steenwyk

04-18-2014, 12:35 PM

Stevie:

Regards your reply to who you thought was me in post #41. That was Eileen talking about her brothers experience when he got home, although I would have given almost anything to have had his job in an F-4, as I was not over my love of flying at that time and really never did get over it. He would never talk about it after he got home though. I have been meaning to join in a little on this thread about your Dad and the rest of the Arkansas bunch, but just haven't taken the time yet. I finally figured out what the problems were with the "Coffin Craft" several years after your Dad bought it, and think I told him what my thoughts were. Will add some to your thread shortly regards that boat and some more stories about that time.

Did you know or ever run into Jim McKean over there. He was an F-100 pilot and served there but not sure of the date. I know they phased them out but do not remember when. That may have been before your time there as I think he was out and flying for Continental while you were gone if I remember the time frame correctly.

I was kind of out of boat racing as far as driving myself after 74 for about 5 years and never heard just what happened with your Dad as far as his passing. Would like to know about the rest of the Hot Springs bunch also, especially Mickey Mcquire. I bought his C Konig that ZAK had made into a twin of mine and then resold it after I got hurt. I have a funny story about him in a fish house in Winona, Minn. that I will pass on soon.

Good to have you on BRF and filling in some of the Arkansas bunch's history from that time.

Ketzer

04-18-2014, 03:33 PM

Oh, sorry, Eileen! But I sure was glad to hear it was you and not Bill that was 18 at that time. I was thinking, darn, I thought Bill Van was older than me. I’m happier knowing he robbed the cradle with you. As to his F-100s, I don’t recall the pilot he mentioned, but there were three squadrons of F-100s at Phan Rang (I was in the 615th, “Black Panthers”), and there were also F-100s at Ben Hoa, all being used up and phased out. I heard that a few years later, they rigged the F-100 to fly unmanned, and used them for air-to-air target practice. A few more “Hun” pictures for the aviation minded.

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Ketzer

04-20-2014, 07:07 AM

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Backing up, Wayne just sent a couple pages of Roostertail results for June 1969, and it looks like the Ketzer Racing Team did some good at El Dorado, Arkansas, with Dad finishing 1st in C-hydro, 2nd in X-hydro, and Vernon Ashley taking a 3rd in X-hydro. While I took a 3rd in C/D-hydro at Womby, Texas. I’ll put the Roostertails below.

The racing flyer above for El Dorado, shows Steve Ketzer and Tommy Goslee working on Tommy’s C-Service. Obviously, the little town of El Dorado had quite a history of putting on boat races at Lake Calion. I found a newspaper article from the Delta-Democrat Times, dated July 5, 1950, that talked about Earl Roberts, then Vice President of the Arkansas Powerboat Association, serving as referee for a race. The years don’t seem to add up for a “Memorial Race,” but that’s what it said—maybe they had more than one race a year.

We raced at El Dorado several times over the years. The Razorback Boat Racing Club could be counted on to show up. It was an interesting venue. The lake was small with stumps around the edges and in the shallow areas—you didn’t venture too far from the race course or even swing too wide on a turn, because you’d end up in the stumps. The pits, though, were beautiful, grassy, and covered with shade trees. Up on the hill was a roadhouse/juke joint, one side served white folks, the other served black folks, but they partied together well into the night. It was loud, but there was no trouble that I recall.

The trouble at Lake Calion came from the air in the form of mosquitoes. We had relatives down for one race, and with the camper full, I slept in our Ford Falcon station wagon. It was a conundrum whether to sleep with the windows up and sweat to death, or roll them down and get attacked by mosquitoes. I threw a sheet over myself for protection and chose the latter. I don’t recall if we had “Off” back then or “Cutter”. If we did and I used it, it didn’t bother those blood suckers one bit. When I crawled out in the morning, I counted more than thirty welts on my legs, and between racing and carrying boats, scratched all day.

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Master Oil Racing Team

04-20-2014, 03:12 PM

This is the T shirt I mentioned earlier. I'm pretty sure it was the 1972 Pro Nationals at Alex. That would be the last NOA Pro race at Alex. After I bought the T shirt and put it on my Dad said "That's old man Ketzer on that shirt". I have no clue whether your Dad was the inspiration for the artwork or not Steve, but my Dad sure believed he was.

Ketzer

04-21-2014, 07:37 AM

Wayne, I’m going to agree with Baldy: It looks like the old man to me. My favorite T-Shirt was a grey one I bought down at Alex one year. It had a racing graphic of a picklefork and a Konig with expansion chambers. Above the graphic it said, “Boat Racers,” and below the graphic, “Do it Faster.” I was wearing it in a Walmart in Hot Springs, and this cute black girl walked up to me, pointed at the shirt and asked, “Is that true?” Tongue-tied in such situations, I could only offer a grin. While I no longer have the shirt, I still have our racing jackets hanging in the closet and will attach a photo in the next post.

But I have another “old man” anecdote. We were at Alex and Dad was climbing into a hydro. A family of spectators was standing in our pit to watch the race, and their young boy pointed to Dad and shouted, “Look at that old man a’gettin’ ready to race that boat!” While I might have been devastated, the “old man”, all of 52 at the time, thought it hilarious.

Master Oil Racing Team

04-21-2014, 07:46 AM

I had to do a double take when I first posted this picture. While wearing the T shirt or looking at it on a hangar, I never noticed it before, but when looking at it in the photograph the North American Continent looks like a leaping Razorback hog.

Stand by Steve for some Roostertail results I am about to scan.

Ketzer

04-22-2014, 05:57 AM

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In the Summer (and Fall) of ’69: Wayne sent more Roostertails with racing results from 1969-70; specifically, of the World Championships at Alex. In ’69, I was in Tech School up at Chanute AFB in Illinois, but Dad had someone in the N.O.A. write to my commander to request my participation in those boat races. So I was sprung for the Alex race. Dad qualified in C-1 runabout. In 1970, he did better with me in Vietnam, qualifying in C-hydro, C-runabout, C-1 hydro, and C-1 runabout. He took 5th in C-1 hydro and in 1970 High Point, took 4th in C-1 hydro. The Ketzer Racing Team had only been at it a few years, but was getting better! Here are just a couple of those Roostertails.

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Ketzer

04-22-2014, 06:22 AM

Wanderlust: This might be a little bland before I get to the next boat of interest. While I was gone, my brother Charlie worked the pits with Vernon and Uncle Ed and sometimes raced a D-runabout gas-burner, but he took off to work the oil fields out of Gillette, Wyoming, and stayed because he loved the hunting and fishing up there. With the war winding down, early-outs were in abundance, and I got out four months early. I was fairly spooled up when I got discharged in March of 1973 (I think I’ve had my racing dates off by one year). Between the boat racing trips and the military, I developed a bad case of wanderlust—now, forty years later, I’m getting over it. I hadn’t been home a month before I took off on a road trip in my ’65 Mustang with a high school buddy, Mike Freeman, to the East Coast, down into Florida, along the gulf to New Orleans, and then back to Hot Springs. Several months later, I moved to New Orleans for a month and worked on the river off a tugboat at Kenner Bend with a crew, black and white and all in our 20s, that tied grain barges together into a flotilla or separated them after a trip down the Mississippi, and then cleaned them out with fires hoses. On the entire crew, I was the only one with a high school diploma; indeed, one or two were illiterate, but they were all great guys and fun to be around. It was hard work and only paid $2.75 an hour, but quite an experience. Also, I met a very pretty girl in Hot Springs who would later marry/divorce me, and that required time. Still, as my hair grew out, I got in some boat racing that summer.

(Steve Jr., Mikey, and Roger Purtee rigging Miss Mouse. Mikey went into the Navy right after this, and as mentioned before, died in an auto accident coming back from a Joe Cocker concert while based at Meridian, Mississippi.)

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(Steve Jr. and Uncle Ed topping off a C-Service—you can’t see Ed in the picture, but that’s him doing the heavy lifting.)

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During 1973, we had a couple big races in Arkansas, one at Diamondhead in Hot Springs, and the other at Dumas. Remote towns like Dumas, for their “Ding Dong Daddy Water Festival,” pulled out all the stops and held the races in conjunction with other activities: parades, bass tournaments, skiing demonstrations. The media coverage was excellent, and for several days the newspaper was full of race boats, skiers, people holding bass and related stories.

(From the Dumas Clarion, this looks like Bill Van getting towed in.)

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(Also from Dumas, the Leavenduskys getting awards.)

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(Steve Ketzer and Tommy Goslee sending Jerry McMillian out in one of our runabouts.)

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(A story about Rex Hall "splashing" one, and the trouble with pleasure boats.)

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(And, lastly, a program from Diamondhead.)

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It was a busy summer. Jerry McMillian had a beautiful Harley-Davidson, a metallic purple 1969 Super Glide with “Z” bars, and with money I saved while in service, I bought it to bomb around Arkansas with my blond girlfriend, Delline, on the back. With the racing season pretty much over, she and I took off for Denver in the Mustang pulling a U-Haul trailer with the Harley inside, among other things. Dad was okay with it, or if he wasn’t, he didn’t say anything. He had many boat racing buddies, and besides, after leaving the military, he had the wanderlust, too. Mine just lasted a few decades longer. I enrolled in college, starting at a community college owing to my lackluster academic record in high school—Hey, I was working at the airport, racing boats, flying airplanes, and skipping school to hang out in the pool hall; in comparison, except for girls and football, high school had nothing to offer. After two years, I transferred to the University of Colorado at Denver to be educated and indoctrinated by ultra-Liberals and a few avowed Communists come down from Boulder, but when summers rolled around, it all came to a halt. We quit our jobs—mine always part time to augment the G.I. Bill—sealed up the apartment, and headed to Arkansas to jump back into the nest, family and all. Dad had me lined up with a job at whatever aviation company he worked for, and we boat raced.

Over the years, Dad was so busy doing his own thing that he didn’t notice wages in the aviation industry had risen considerably and that Futrell was paying slave wages, until a friend of Jerry McMillian’s who owned a crop dusting outfit down in DeWitt, called Bullock Flying Service, offered him, and Uncle Ed, jobs at double the wages. Dad gave Futrell an ultimatum, Futrell called his bluff, and Dad and Ed packed up and headed to DeWitt where they (and I) worked during the week but returned to Hot Springs on the weekends. Actually, I worked on a farm where I drove a tractor, poured cement and built a few grain silos, and ran across rice fields flagging for crop dusters (the days before GPS). The money was good, but when the opportunity arose to be the Director of Maintenance for a Cessna Service Center and pilot school down in Texarakana, Dad took it, as long as they also hired me and Uncle Ed, and the next summer we drove back and forth to Texarkana and got to see Joe and Bobby Bolton frequently.

Futrell began to understand that he had screwed the pooch. Buying and selling used Beechcraft was one thing, but to do it without mechanics of Dad and Ed’s caliber, who were also pilots, Dad being a commercial pilot with multi-engine rating, and could not only go get some out-of-annual, used up dog and ferry it back to Hot Spring, but make it airworthy, pretty and easy to sell, ate into Futrell’s profit margin big time. He begged them to come back, at higher wages, and they (we) did.

The only race driver experience I have this time is of an automotive nature. My buddy, Mike Watkins, and I, along with wives, took his car to a boat race in Louisiana while Dad, Uncle Ed and Vernon took the rig. After the races and stopping for dinner, we blasted ahead in the car with Mike driving and apparently feeling “the need for speed” after watching boat races. He was burning up the asphalt, as they say. While passing through some one-stop-sign town in southern Arkansas, the flashing lights came on behind us—it may have been a speed trap, but we were definitely speeding. Not only did the cop give Mike a ticket, but he hauled him down to the town’s little pokey and demanded the fine be paid on the spot, and, furthermore, the car was impounded: no one was going anywhere until that fine was paid. Well, it wasn’t a great amount of money, but between the four of us, we didn’t have the scratch. So I walked back to the highway, it being the age before cell phones, and in the darkness, walked up and down the white line awaiting the Ketzer Racing Team, who eventually came rolling down the road, I flagged them down, Dad paid the fine, and set us free.

Bill Van Steenwyk

04-22-2014, 12:31 PM

Stevie:

I know Wayne is familiar with this story, but it is such a good one I think a lot of folks will get a kick out of it, especially those who knew Ray Hardy.

This race brings back a lot of memories for Eileen and I, one of which is very humorous and has as one of it's chief players someone who youand the other readers may or may not remember. His name was Ray Hardy, from Chicago, Il., and unfortunately he passed away several years ago from the consequences of Alzheimer's. Ray, who was also a good friend of Baldy's, as well as Eileen's and mine, had called me several days prior to this race after deciding to come down, and asked me to reserve a room at a local motel where we would be staying. Motels were in very short supply in Dumas, in fact there may have only been one, so when we (Eileen and I) arrived and checked in we asked about a room for Ray and his wife. The manager told us they only had one room left which was the "Bridal Suite" and asked if that would be alright, and since it was either that one or nothing we said yes. As Ray and his then wife Jeanie, were having some problems at this point, which later on led to Ray leaving and then divorce, Eileen and I thought that perhaps a "Bridal Suite" atmosphere was just what was needed for the sake of the marriage. The really special thing about this room was the large canopied four poster bed and everything in the room was done in pink, including the walls and furnishings. We called him and filled him in and he said he would be coming in late and would come out to the race course which was a way from town as you mentioned, to drop off his trailer and then we could have supper together and get a good nites rest for the coming race.

After meeting him as agreed and having dinner, we saw to his check in and before going up to our rooms, I agreed to give Ray a wake up call in the morning as he wanted to ride out to the race course with me and get in some early testing. That would leave his car for Jeanie and Eileen to come out later after they had slept in for awhile. I did give him a call the next AM about 6 and went down stairs to wait at my car. About 15-20 minutes went by and no Ray, so I went back up and called him again. He again said he would be down in just a few minutes. After another 20 minutes or so, I went back up and called the third time and told him in no uncertain terms if he wanted to ride with me he had 15 minutes to get downstairs or I was leaving.

Just as I was about to pull out without him, I heard him call my name, and the door to his room slam shut above me and he appeared hurrying down the stairs. He was only about half dressed, red as a beet on the bare skin I could see, and had a big "knot" on his upper forehead that was getting larger by the minute. I of course wanted to know what had happened and he related the following story.

After my third call he had realized I was serious so he got up and stepped into the shower to take a cold one and hopefully wake up from what had caused the problems from the nite before. Unfortunately the hot and cold water faucets in the tub/shower combo were reversed from the order he was familiar with (remember he was from Chicago and this was rural Arkansas) and instead of getting the cold faucet he had turned on the hot water, and when I say hot, I mean HOT, almost steam. He immediately started yelling and trying to get it turned off but the faucet was stuck and would not budge, so to keep from getting scalded more than he was he tried to pull back the shower curtain so as to get out. Like most of you are familiar with, the rings on the curtain would not slide quickly or easily, so he just grabbed the whole curtain and pulled it down and lunged out of the tub. He got his feet tangled up in the bottom of the curtain, as it was now laying in the tub, and started to fall forward, headfirst, towards the commode which was adjacent to the tub and had the pink wooden seat in the up position from previous use.

He reached out to break his fall and keep from hitting his head on the porcelain edge of the commode, and the sudden jar to it from all his weight caused the wooden seat to fall, cracking his knuckles in the process, and causing him to yell in pain from the hand injury. His wife Jeanie, heard all the commotion in the bathroom, and as the door was closed and she could not see what had happened, started yelling to him wanting to know what the problem was. As he was laying on the floor, scalded from the steamy water, and with what he thought were broken knuckles. he could hear her running across the floor to check on him as she had heard him hit the floor behind the closed bathroom door, and also heard the screaming from the scalding he had gotten from the hot water.

As he was relating the story, I could see the knot on his head getting visibly larger as he talked, and just as I was about to ask him about it, he got the rest of the story out, and I was almost unable to drive the rest of the way to the course as I was laughing so hard as he related "the rest of the story". As he was laying on the floor about two feet away from the door (which opened inwards) he was visualizing what was about to happen. He tried to get up and get out of the way. Unfortunately, time was up, and when Jeanie threw open the door, the bottom edge of the door cracked him across the forehead giving him the big knot that was continuing to get bigger by the minute.

As I got to know Ray better over the following years, I came to realize that things like this that happen only occasionally, if ever to regular folks, were a regular occurrence in his life, and provided much humor and fun for his friends when the stories were retold. He was a one of a kind, a good friend, and someone who, like your Dad, provided me with a lot of fun and pleasure in my life because of our friendship. The saddest things sometimes happen to the best folks, and Ray's later illness was one of these cases. He was a very talented person, who could take a problem and not only figure out how to solve it, but with a drill press, hack saw, and file, make the tool, part, or thing, to accomplish what you were trying to do in 24 hours or less.

For those who wonder why in the world the race festival was called something like the "Ding Dong Daddy Festival", that was the name of a country song from 10-15 years (I think) or so prior, called "I'm a Ding, Dong, Daddy from Dumas" which of course was Dumas, Arkansas.

Master Oil Racing Team

04-23-2014, 07:28 AM

I laugh every time I hear that story Bill Van. I just wish I would have known about it before Ray was gone so I could ask him about it.

Here's a photo you remember hanging on the wall in my Dad's bar down in the bottom level of his house at Barbon. It was taken at Lake Catherine near Hot Springs at the first annual Waldman Memorial Race in 1973. Steve, I figured you would like this picture. See how many guys you can name. Not everyone that was there is in the picture, but most of them are. I had a 20 X 30 framed for my Dad and hung it in the bar. Every racer that came to visit after 1973 always took a real good look at it.

Ketzer

04-23-2014, 07:16 PM

Thanks for the great story, Bill Van. Suddenly, “Ding Dong Daddy” takes on new meaning. I recall going up to that motel in Dumas to eat breakfast, but I was happy to be sleeping in the camper down in the pits (and not in a Falcon station wagon). And thanks Wayne for the photo! I didn’t know it existed, but do recognize several people. That is Johnny Dortch in the red coveralls and white hat, right? Well, I spent a couple hours going through boxes up in the attic. I was looking for pictures or clippings that might tweak my memory regarding races and places from ’74 to ’76, but didn’t come up with much, other than more photos of our Marchetti, “Cool Cat” that I’ll write about in due course. However, I did find my Three Stooges Official Membership Card! I’ve been looking for it for fifty years!

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For the boat racing aviators, I ran across the Ketzer & Wendel Bamboo Bomber (Wendel left, Steve right), and Dad’s sketchbook of possible paint schemes (you can see how he arrived at yellow with blue trim for the boats). Also, with this lull, I’m going to tell a couple stories about homebuilt aircraft, since Smitty the Welder emailed me a great story about homebuilts—said he didn’t want to mess up or interrupt the Ketzer Racing Team thread.

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Inspectors new to the FAA, usually at the GS-12 grade, cut their teeth on general aviation (GA) before being assigned to air carrier certificates. The GA work typically involved overseeing pilot schools, mechanic schools, small air taxi operations, small repair stations, inspecting and dealing with A&Ps and IAs, inspecting GA aircraft, approving homebuilt or kit airplanes, and such. With a few years under the belt as a GS-13, an inspector moved on to air carrier work. A sad state of affairs putting GA at a disadvantage, but that’s the way it worked. To put that GS (General Service) business in perspective, I was an inspector for 21 years, and not a bad one. I retired as a GS-14. During the blue dress incident with Monica Lewinsky, while she and Linda Trip were trying to decide how they could parlay it into a promotion, they turned up their noses at a GS-15 position. That being said, I’m glad I didn’t reach the 15 level.

Actually, working with air carriers was easier, because they knew and understood the regulations, whether or not they always agreed and followed them; whereas, from the GA side, you could sometimes expect arguments and anger, such as, “Where does it say I can’t put a NAPA alternator on my Cessna!” Or, “Where does it say I have to have my torque wrench, cable tensiometer, and Fluke calibrated!” Or, “Where does it say I have to show you my certificate!” And, if you offered, “Let me see your Regs, and I’ll show you,” you’d more than likely follow with the rhetorical, “And you don’t have a copy of the Regs? Hmm.”

Thus, homebuilt or experimental aircraft. In addition to being cheaper and fun, there was much less government intrusion, fewer rules and regulations. Basically, the builder/pilot accepted the responsibility, liability, and danger. Still, the Feds monitored the building, inspected the finished product, and if all looked fairly normal, issued a Special Airworthiness Certificate, handed them a pamphlet on flight testing, and said, “Good luck, buddy.” During the inspection process, if the builder wasn’t an A&P, you might run into Standard Practice problems, reversed safety wire and so on, but mostly they did good work, and some designs, like Rutan’s, went above and beyond and over the heads of most FAA Inspectors. Oh, and during the inspection, you made sure that if you rolled in left aileron, their little bird could be expected to bank to the left, and not the right. Cross-rigging has happened after major repairs. The pilot takes off, rolls the wheel to the left, and the plane banks right. So he rolls it harder to the left, the plane banks steeper to the right, et cetera, until flown into the ground.

But anyway, the first kit plane I certificated was built by a guy in his 70s who had flown small Cessnas many years earlier, but wasn’t current. I’ve forgotten the make, but it was a little tricycle gear, single seat, high wing, all aluminum tubing and fabric, with a Rotax pusher engine. He did pretty good work. On the weekend after I issued the airworthiness certificate, I got a call from one of my FAA compadres who was on accident standby: “Hey, Ketzer, you know that kit plane you approved last week?” Oh, crap! Well, the guy had hauled it out to the airport and on the shorter runway had intended to do some high speed taxi and grasshopper moves—lifting it off, letting it settle back down—just to get a feel for it and see if he needed to tweak the flight control trim tabs. So he puts the power to it, and the little plane fairly leaps into the air. Instead of chopping the power, he freaks and tries to fly it. But the engine had beaucoup torque, and instead of kicking in some rudder and a little aileron, he let it fly him, “Smack!” right into a snow bank—fortunately, there were snow banks. Other than a bump on the nose, only his pride was hurt; well, and his airplane.

The first true homebuilt I put a certificate on was, basically, a Super Cub lookalike with a Mazda rotary engine. During the building process, I called to check status one day and was told, “Kinda had a setback…burned up the first engine.” What? Well, he failed to cut a hole in the cowling for airflow to the radiator, so the Mazda engine cooked itself during ground runs. When he got another engine in, I figured I better go out and watch him run it. So I headed out to his house that was located near one of those dirt landing strips that can be found all over Alaska. I walked around the plane and noticed he had the tail wheel rope-tied to a birch tree. I figured, well, an extra measure of safety, not a bad idea. He says, “Are you ready?” I say, you bet, and I’m thinking we’re going to get in there together, or at least he is, but he walks up to the plane, reaches in the window, and fires it up (car engines don’t require all the priming and stuff). He’s all grinning and proud when he looks back at me, then he reaches back inside and shoves in the throttle. The tail wheel jumps off the ground, the engine is roaring, the plane is shaking, the birch tree is trembling, and I’m waving my arms and shouting, “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” But he eventually got it all put together, the wrinkles ironed out, and flew it for many hours while hangar bums no doubt looked up and thought, “That is the strangest sounding Super Cub I’ve ever heard.”
With any luck, I’ll be back to boat racing in the next post—this was all Smitty’s fault..

Master Oil Racing Team

04-23-2014, 07:53 PM

God bless Smitty. He has done it to me too Steve, and I have enjoyed every minute.

That's what makes threads like yours so special. You're telling a tale, and sometimes, like on my Baldy thread someone like Smitty throws in something that is maybe not directly tied to boat racing, but it is part of the boat racers story. His or her life. It is a part of where they came from. Just like the drawings of the airplanes, schematics, colors, etc. Your Dad was an excellent artist. The only boat racer whose art I have seen before was Harry Pasturczak, and his was engineering perfect. Your Dad's though was like an artist. I was blown away by the illustrations you posted before. It demonstrates the mindset of someone who really paid attention to what he was taught and really wanted to be the best he could be.

The encyclopedia is not just for boat racing escapades. It's all about the people that started racing boats...how they got there...what experiences they had... and what they're doing now. It's all about boat racers, family, friends and lifetime experiences at the races.

And Smitty....keep on coaxing tales out of boat racers!

Stuart

04-23-2014, 11:27 PM

I would just like to thank you for putting your life and memories out here for us to see and take us on these trips through time. I grew up with inboards put did know some of the great pro outboard guys here in Northern Cal. Steve thank you for your service. Having just turned 50 I do not recall the times, but have nothing but gratitude for those that served. THANK YOU ALL

Ketzer

04-24-2014, 06:47 AM

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Thanks, Stuart. We have troops fighting as we speak. Well, I wouldn’t know how to act in an inboard. You guys were probably required to drive with Flight Attendants. My dad, Uncle Ed and I loaded up in the camper and went to Owensboro in 1973 to watch the unlimiteds run—that was a busy summer. But, wow, those unlimited hydros! I’ll never forget the sound and the roostertails that went all the way to Argentina. We got pit badges and got to watch them prepare the boats and crane them into the water. We stayed in a campground on the other side of the river, a great area to watch the races. When we pulled into the campground, holy cow, outboards with modified Mercs lined the bank! They were holding outboard races as a warm-up for the unlimiteds. Dad said, “Crap, we could have brought our boats.” And I said, “Yeah, and then we could have said, I raced with the unlimiteds.”

smittythewelder

04-24-2014, 10:54 AM

I enjoy seeing digressions in any thread I start, but try not to go off-track too far on other's threads if I don't know them well. That said, many racers, and nearly every racer in any kind of modified, non-turnkey class, in any form of motor racing I can think of, is a gear-head! Gear-heads in any motor sport are invariably interested in hearing about any other form of motor sport. Drag-racers like to hear about shifter karts, roadracers compare notes with flat-trackers, airplane restorers can yak for hours with car restorers, and so on.

If you're old enough (and Ron's wonderful site attracts lots of codgers), you'll recall vividly the release of Bruce Brown's knockout survey-of-motorcycling movie, "On Any Sunday," in 1971 (??)(I'll come back with the right date and edit this)(EDIT: Wow, I was right!). Someone not involved in any sort of motorsport might have imagined that the movie would only attract motorcyclists or teen-age wannabees. But every member of Seattle Outboard at the time immediately went to see the movie, and we were absolutely jazzed by it!! I don't even have to ask if this was the case around the country (and I'd bet money that your thread is going to be sidetracked now with old guys telling us about their memories of "On Any Sunday," Steve)(glad you don't mind digressions that gear-heads think relevant).

Bamboo Bomber story: After the war, in late-'45/early-'46, the only flying job my dad could get for a while was charters with one of those slab-sided (but beautiful in their own way) Cessnas with their gas-guzzling "shaky-Jake" Jacobs radials. On one trip, headed home to LA, he encountered strong head-winds, and found that he had underestimated the amount of fuel he'd had to buy. Not wanting to take unnecessary risks with a load of passengers, he put down at what he hoped would be an acceptable place to add some fuel . . . an Army Air Force base. The war had been over for months, but as soon as he taxied up to what looked like a gas-dock, he and his plane full of baffled passengers were met by a squadron of armed soldiers in jeeps, led by an irate major. Dad explained that he didn't have a lot of choice in the matter, but it took the intervention of a VIP passenger to get the grumpy major cooled down, the Cessna gassed up, and passengers and pilot happily departed for home.

Trivia: Everybody now remembers Sky King flying a Cessna 310 (early straight-tail), but he started that TV series in a Bamboo Bomber. This is the trouble with thread digressions; they're too much fun, and tend to spin farther and farther off-topic, LOL.

Master Oil Racing Team

04-24-2014, 01:55 PM

You're right Smitty. I like all kinds of racing. That was the fun part of being a photographer for Motorsport covering stock car racing, champ car racing, motorcycle racing and of course boat racing (alky, opc, inboard marathons and drag racing.) And that movie "On Any Sunday" was great. I went to see it during my last semester in college. Joe Flow is in the business of making specialty valves for all types of high performance engines from sports cars, to champ cars, outlaw sprints, trucks, stock cars, etc. His cusstomers have won and placed high in most major events, and dominating Pike's Peak. He was working on a valve to control coolant in an outboard using premium motor oil and a closed system on an outboard. After some bench tests we did a weekend of field trials with Jim and Sean McKean, but we didn't know it at the time but the Yamato rigged with the valve had a very, very slight leak in the seal between the head and block. The motor ran great, but it kept overpressurizing the closed cooling system. This wasn't figured out until after the final modifications were made and a plastic hose blew out and sprayed everything down with hot oil. I was proud to be a part of the team recording the tests. In order to be included all participating members of the team had to watch a movie starring Anthony Hopkins about an Australian or New Zealand motorcycle rider named Bert Munroe. I can't remember the name of the movie, but it was about one guy's hard work to set a speed record in America with an old Indian motorcycle against what all his detractors called impossible odds. It was a great movie, but just like you say, all us Gear-heads in any motor sport are interested in other forms of motorsports.

Ketzer

04-25-2014, 06:32 AM

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“Hey, Sky King, you might wanna de-ice that 310 before take-off.” I haven’t heard that “Shaky Jake” expression in quite a while. And I’ll bet you know, Smitty, that among aircraft mechanics, the “PT-6” of the more modern Pratt & Whitney turbine engines found on Beech King Airs, stands for, “Penile Thrust—Six Inches.” Working at Central Flying Service in Little Rock during the late 80s, it was very unusual to see a stick and fabric or tail-dragger aircraft come in, and I imagined there weren’t many left, but a few years later I found them all: They moved to Alaska, but not to retire. Walking around the ramp and float pond was like visiting an air museum. As for motorcycle racing, the only experience I have—and this at 12 or 13—is sliding around on dirt roads out in backwoods Arkansas on a Cushman Eagle; although, my brother, Charlie, raced a Ducati in Moto X before he started boat racing with us. And as for that “codger” comment, we weren’t codgers when Wayne started his “Baldy” thread, so it must be his fault (I read his post this morning about the female pit crew). Back to airplanes for a second, here’s a picture flying over Atigun Pass in the Brooks Range. Some IFR pilots (I Follow Roads…Rivers…Railroad tracks), ended up on the sides of those mountains. They’d try to sneak through the pass, encountered fog, couldn’t turn around, couldn’t out-climb the mountains…Mm-mm-mm. The accident investigation wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t pretty. Definitely back to the boat racing after this.

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smittythewelder

04-25-2014, 10:48 AM

Enjoyed flying over terrain like that as passenger in a family friend's badly-overloaded poor little old Aeronca Sedan on the way out of Anchorage on moose and caribou hunting trips around Lake Susitna. Less enjoyable was the ride back from one of those trips in the '54 Ford station wagon assigned to carry the meat home to Anchorage. The Glen Highway had long stretches that had been displaced vertically by the freezing and thawing of the layer above the permafrost, I guess; anyway, the road had what any boater would call good-sized rollers. By chance, this loaded-down Ford wagon had the worn-out rear shocks removed for replacement, but the owner hadn't got around to getting and putting in the new shocks before the trip. The co-driver, 17-year-old Smitty, would very gradually add throttle as the wagon went over the "rollers," but pretty soon the frequency of the bumps matched the frequency of the rear springs, and the poor wagon quickly was bouncing higher and higher, slamming down on the bump-stops on the frame until I quickly applied some brakes and restarted the process. That was a loooong drive home!

Wayne, the movie was, "World's Fastest Indian;" I haven't seen it, but remember very well reading in Hot Rod about those record runs at Bonneville Speed Week in 1967. Burt Munro, who actually got that old scooter over 200mph one-way, was 68 at the time, inspiration to all old guys. (In fact, I read somewhere a pretty good comment on that: "Men don't quit doing things because they get old. Men get old because they quit doing things."

Steve, here's one for you, and then I'll stop with the airplane stories. A kid who was working as a flightline gas-boy on Lake Hood in Anchorage, the worlds largest floatplane base, was visiting in Seattle and happened to be walking around the GA airplanes on Renton Field, while waiting for his host. The host came out of the shack and found the kid staring at a DeHavilland Beaver in the tie-down area.

"Jeez, yer from Alaska, don't tell me you've never seen a Beaver before!!," exclaimed the host.

Said the gas-boy, still staring, "I never seen one on wheels . . . ."

Ketzer

04-27-2014, 07:21 AM

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(I can’t help myself...Beavers in Juneau.) Sent down to Juneau one summer to help out during the height of the tourist season, I did an inspection ride, also known as “en route,” in a Beaver on floats. In the back were paying passengers from a cruise ship. It was a good ride with no problems up to the Taku Glacier and back, a regular highway of airplanes on either side of the channel hauling tourists back and forth. When we got back to the Gastineau Channel in front of Juneau, a boat had just departed and left a couple lines of rollers behind. I kind of expected the pilot to fly over the waves or do a go-around, but, no, he settled right into them. Only doing an airworthiness check, not being a seaplane pilot myself, sterile cockpit and all, I said nothing. Well, we kissed the top of the first roller, kissed the second more in the French fashion, and then hit the third one hard, so hard my David-Clarks fell down around my neck. While I glared at the pilot, he recovered, set her down, looked over at me and shrugged, somewhat sheepishly. During the landing, passengers in the back yelled, “Weeeeee!” They thought it was all normal and part of the ride. As they say, any landing you walk away from, or maybe swim away from, is a good one. And here’s a picture of my buddy coming in at the float pond in Fairbanks.

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Ketzer

04-27-2014, 07:34 AM

Cool Cat: As I was transitioning from community college to university up in Denver, Dad was down south transitioning to Konigs: rotary valve, expansion chambers, sliding stacks. Hooah! Some of that Konig equipment, he got from Harry Marinoneaux, father of Bruce and Lucien. Dad and Harry worked out a big deal. Apparently, the Marinoneauxs were totally upgrading their fleet and getting rid of all the old stuff, including a few boats, flathead Mercs, some Konig stuff, miscellaneous parts and pieces, and a couple buckets of props, no doubt the ones Wayne Baldwin saw a few years earlier mounted in their trailer. In exchange, we, but mostly Dad and Uncle Ed, would rebuild a wrecked Cessna 180 with Harry’s mechanic supplying all the parts, sending them up from Louisiana. The shop on Douglas was packed. In addition to the Cessna fuselage, we had two long engine stands full of modified Mercs, flatheads, C-Service and Konigs, two Harley-Davidsons, shelves overflowing with parts, a hydro or runabout in the paint booth area that could be enclosed with a canvas curtain, and we had airplane parts on the floor and hanging from the rafters. Dad had some trading material, and I don’t know where all that boat racing stuff ended up, but the shop thinned out and got back to normal in a few years, just about the time we finally finished the airplane.

We were smokin’ on the Cessna to begin with, overhauled the Continental engine, got some of the major repairs done, installed a new windshield and windows, but work ground to a halt when we ran out of parts, always needing this before we could do that. Parts came up from Louisiana, but the wrong ones, and we’d have to ship them back and start over. As I said, it took years to wrap it up. The Cessna took up so much space, that Dad rented a T-Hangar out at Memorial Field to store and work on it. One job I had that was a real nut-buster was taking the protective paper off the plexi-glass windshield and windows. The paper and its gooey stick-um had been on there so long—although new parts, they were old to begin with, and then we made the mistake of leaving it on longer—the stick-um had dried up. I finally got it off the windshield okay, but on the side windows, it came off in little strips if it came off at all. The rest, I had to remove with a razorblade, and no matter how careful, it left a few scratches. So then I went to work on the scratches with a Micro-Mesh kit, a wet sanding process, all by hand, of course, with at least a dozen levels of grit, the final few grits being so smooth, you thought them grit-less. Of course, Dad wanted to be done with the airplane, but didn’t seem too bothered until I, after spending many days of my summer Micro-Meshing away up in that hot T-Hangar, came around saying, “We need to finish that damn thing and get rid of it!” From what I could tell, Harry didn’t seem too concerned, either. But, we finally got ‘er done, and I was there to watch Dad take it up for first flight. I have a picture of the Cessna 180 with Ed, and I’m not sure, but that might be Harry.

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The new Konigs were a bit much for Soooie-Pig—we might have ended up in that straightaway disaster Bill Van predicted—so Dad bought a used C/D Marchetti that came with the name “Cool Cat” and we kept the name and the red and white colors. After driving the Warren and the Goff-Hagness, that Marchetti drove like a dream. I hadn’t been in a hydro that handled that well since I climbed out of the Neal for the last time. You could enter a turn with speed, crank it in, and have every expectation of coming out the other side.

(Dad and Uncle Ed working on Cool Cat at Birmingham, and me, same race.)

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In June of 1976—at least that’s what the photo stamp dates are; could have been May ’76—we made the long trip to a boat race near Birmingham, Alabama. I don’t recall if it was A.O.F. or A.P.B.A., and all I have for information on the back of the photographs is a note on one that reads, “Kicking Butt in Birmingham.” I raced “Cool Cat” with the C-Konig (rotary valve, sliding stacks) and finished 1st in one heat, and I believe 2nd in the other. While we did well at Birmingham, pickleforks were faster, and had already taken over. So after only a few races, “Cool Cat” went away.

(Dad working on Cool Cat, and me going out.)

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Ketzer

05-01-2014, 04:52 PM

Why Me: During the fall and winter of ’76, I studied Shelly and Keats, Wordsworth and Blake, Shakespeare and Chaucer, Henry James and W.D. Howells, Mark Twain and Hamlin Garland (while working part time, over the years in Denver, as a janitor, hot roofer, construction laborer, painter, extruder operator in a plastics factory, and cook to supplement the G.I. Bill), and Dad studied boats for sale. We ended up with a picklefork—I think it’s a Butts Aerowing, but not positive—and one of Marshall Grant’s “Ring of Fire” runabouts we renamed “Why Me” and the hydro “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” It was a good, fast runabout and we raced B and C Konig’s on it. Although I didn’t like runabouts, I raced it a couple times, once on Lake Catherine in Hot Springs, I think 1977 after the Diamondhead races went kaput.

We set up our pit a couple days before the race and had plenty of time to test. I came back from a test run in “Why Me” with the B Konig, and Vernon Ashley got on me, started whipping me on the butt with a start rope. He said, “Stevie Jr! Boy! What were you doin’? You need to get your butt in the back of that boat! All the way back!” I told him it felt pretty good where I was riding, but he said, “I want to see your butt against the transom next time! That boat’ll take it! Hell, they ran a D on that boat!” So I got back in for another run with Vernon whipping me on the butt as I climbed in. After rounding the first turn buoys, I headed into the back straight, squeezed the throttle closed, grabbed the sliding stacks, scooted my butt back until it hit the tank or transom or both, and hunkered down.

I’m telling you, that little “Why Me” boat just started cookin’. We were going fast, ripping down the back stretch. About the time I decided Vernon and Dad were right, things took a turn for the worse, and all I saw was sky. The boat was pointing to high noon, or at least 11, and doing that brief dancing-on-the-stacks routine that I witnessed from the banks a few times, and while some drivers, like Butch Leavendusky, were adept at recovering from that situation, I, apparently, was not. After coming down hard on the left side, “Why Me” went one way, and I went the other. The impact on the boat caused such a concussion or flexing that it blew wood from the opposite side of the hull, while I felt like my ribs were being pummeled by a gorilla.

Back on the bank, I gave Dad and Vernon the silent treatment when they told of a gust of wind they saw rippling across the back straight. I felt like I had a chest full of broken ribs; even taking shallow breaths hurt, so I went off to get X-Rayed, although Vernon and Dad suggested, and rightly so, there was nothing doctors could do about cracked or bruised ribs. You just had to man-up and deal with it. As it turned out, I didn’t even have cracked ribs, only bruised. What a wimp. But I got back on the horse and raced “Why Me” a couple days later after we put a quick, wooden patch on the side, which accounts for the waffled look on the hull in the photograph. I did not put my butt against the transom, and I did not finish in the money.

(I don’t believe this photograph is at the Hot Springs race, but later that summer in Louisiana; that’s “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” behind “Why Me” with a Service engine.)

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About getting back on the horse, a few decades later in 2004, after being without one for several years, I bought a motorcycle, a new Honda VTX-1300-C, not a Harley but a nice, fast bike. I once had her up to 110 mph coming down from the hills on the Steese Highway near Fairbanks, and she had more to give. Well, I had about 3,000 miles on it and was out riding some 25 miles north of Fairbanks on the Elliott Highway, a paved but potholed road, when a dished out, unpaved patch snuck up on me while doing about fifty. It’s a beautiful ride: the road rises to follow ridgelines with views of spruce and white birch filled valleys down below, and, on good days, Denali way in the distance as clear as a postcard. Riding in Alaska is a bit different. The roads are much narrower, the woods aren’t cut way back from the shoulders—where they are cut back, willows quickly grow to fill the void—and pot holes and frost heaves are common, as are moose and other critters. So, if you’re smart, you ride with eyes scanning like radar. Still, with shadows falling across the road, riding in and out of sunlight, it’s difficult to spot road damage.

Unfortunately, the exit end of the gravel patch had a substantial asphalt lip. The front wheel cocked against that pavement, and the Honda and I went arse over tea kettle. Fortunately, I was wearing a padded jacket, knuckle gloves, a full cover helmet, and, as it was chilly, insulated jeans with long johns underneath. Still seeing stars swirling and gasping for breath, I got up and started patting myself down, feeling for bones, and was happy to find myself intact, but beginning to hurt. I went to retrieve one boot that had dispatched down the road. Dumb as it sounds, my greatest concern at that point was bear. Holy crap, I’m out in the middle of nowhere, I’m hurt, there’s no way I can pick up this bike, and there are bear out here who want to slap me around and eat me. (Although I lived in Alaska for 21 years, I’m not much of an outdoorsman.)

But before a bear came, a pick-up truck stopped—I got lucky: you could go for miles and miles without seeing another vehicle. He helped me get the Honda on its wheels and off the road. When I asked for a ride to town, he said, “Oh, I wouldn’t leave the bike out here. It’ll be gone when you get back. Can’t you ride it?” The shifter and foot brake levers were bent, so we straightened them with a huge pair of channel-lock pliers he had. Then I tried starting it, and, being a Honda, it started. So with mirrors broken off, tail lights dangling by their wires, and a big dent on one side of the gas tank along with other minor damage, I rode the 25 miles back to Fairbanks. I was hurting but okay until I got near Fairbanks and into traffic, where, without mirrors, I had to crank my neck and back around to look for cars.

When I pulled into the garage, my wife, Vicki, came out and was horrified at my condition, jacket and helmet all scratched and scuffed up, jeans torn, and me quite pale. My right leg was beginning to swell from the contusion when I suggested she might want to drive me to the hospital, where they discovered I had a six cracked ribs, a partially collapsed lung, fluid on the lungs, a chipped bone in my foot, and various contusions later rendering my right hip black with bruises. I spent three days in the hospital and walked on crutches to physical therapy for a couple weeks. In fact, as I write this, my hip is starting to hurt: must be getting ready to rain.

On the drive to the hospital, Vicki gave me a mean look and demanded, “You’re not going to get back on that thing, are you?” After riding it for 25 miles immediately after the accident, I could honestly reply, “Hell, yes, I am.” I still have the bike, and it has over 12,000 miles on it at the moment. However, having experienced hitting the pavement at 50 mph, I didn’t care to know what it felt like at 110, so I never attempted to best my speed record, and was most cautious for several hundred miles after the accident. I must mention my doctor at the emergency room. She was a real sourpuss with a bad attitude and didn’t seem to care if I lived or died. She was, “Tsk-Tsk. Another old man on a motorcycle.” Had I been in a knife fight, she probably would have shown more compassion. But the accident brought back memories of “Why Me.” The old man and Vernon must have thought I was quite a wuss for complaining about a few bruised ribs. (Me and the VTX)

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Master Oil Racing Team

05-02-2014, 09:22 PM

Some great stories and photos Steve. Seems to me like your Dad did buy the last Ring of Fire. I will see what I can find out. The Johnson's bought Marshall's C Service motors I think, but I don't know if they bought any boats. Marshall told Joe Rome and I about who bought what at the end, so I need to ask him what he remembers.

Ketzer

05-04-2014, 05:26 AM

Styx Tryx: We must have picked up the picklefork, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, for our C-Konig, in the spring or early summer of ’77, because, after painting on our color and number, we didn’t have time for testing at Twin Creeks before we headed off to our first race, and I’m thinking at Alex. So we did our initial runs and rigging on the race course. I made the first laps close to the bank so Dad, Uncle Ed and Vernon could take a look. The boat felt so-so in the turns, dug and jerked much more than the Marchetti, and, of course, that was without ten or twelve boats churning up the water. The straightaways were a different story. The picklefork rode high in front, and I couldn’t feel the sponsons ever tapping the water. Edging up in the boat didn’t make a difference; it just rode high, floated. It felt stable, but too stable, eerily so, and I was ready to lean forward or back off the throttle if I felt it begin to rotate. Wayne Baldwin described that feeling well with his analogy of flying airplanes and reaching V2, where, with the trim-tab set correctly, all it takes is slight pressure back on the yoke…and you’re airborne. I’ve had the pleasure of riding jump seats in large aircraft, including DC-10, 747 and 767, and believe it or not, you get that same feeling of the aircraft being smooth, light, and ready to rotate—lift, gravity, thrust and drag having done battle and settled on the equilibrium of flight. Of course, with any aircraft it’s by the numbers, and in the larger ones you have the First Officer calling out the airspeed and V-speeds from “Airspeed is alive” to “V1…V2, and rotate…gear up.”

Anyway, I got back on the bank, and in response to, “It looked good; how did it feel?” I said something like, “Well, boy, I don’t know. This is different. Jerks through the turns, but not real bad. On the straights it just kind of rides high…kind of floats.” Then someone, probably Vernon Ashley, said, “Hell, Stevie, they don’t call it an Aerowing for nothin’!” So I went out for another run and while making a pass by the pits, I saw them waving me back in. Apparently, another boat racer came jogging down the bank to tell Dad, “You better get that boy down in the water, or you’ll be calling him ‘Jumpin’ Jack Splash’ pretty soon!” We kicked it down a notch, and on the next run, it felt much better, like a hydro again. I don’t recall finishing in the money at that race, but I didn’t flip, either, so that was a plus.

(I don’t have a picture of Dad with “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” or I’d use it; but here’s one of me looking like I can’t figure out which end of the spark plug to put in the hole. Race location: Unknown.)

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After I got out of college, to jump ahead, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” was reincarnated. The first paint job was just a quickie to race, but we had wanted to fiberglass the top, so I tore into it, stripped and sanded it down, cleaned it up, laid on the fiberglass mesh, and slopped on the resin. At first, it looked like hell, and I was thinking, man, I’ve ruined our boat. But after much sanding, then more resin, more sanding, more resin, it started looking pretty good. Still, I wondered if the cloudiness would go away and the wood grain come back, as Dad predicted. When I had it as smooth as the proverbial baby’s butt, Dad shot it with the first clear-coat of polyurethane, and, man, that beautiful wood grain just popped. It was gorgeous!

I had a high school buddy named Chuck who was an artist in a variety of mediums, including the drums. He had recently taken up air-brush and put some great art on vans and motorcycles, which was popular back in the 70s. Chuck was dying to put something on one of our hydros, so we got together and drew up designs. To begin with, yellow flames would run down the sponsons, but still leave plenty of beautiful wood. I drew what I wanted, and Dad laid out the flames freehand with quarter inch tape. I masked; he shot, and it was looking good. (You might be thinking, “Buddy, if you’d spent more time thinking about going fast, and less about being pretty, you might have won more races.” True. True.)

But anyway, I decided to rename the boat “Styx Tryx”, as my nickname in high school and for many years thereafter was “Stick.” Dad didn’t care for it. What kind of name was that for a boat, “Stikes Trikes?” and what in the world did it mean? Despite me explaining how cool it was, and correcting his pronunciation with, “Nooooo, Daaaaad! It’s ‘Styx,’ like the river, and ‘Tryx,’ like t-r-i-c-k-s. Get it?” he said, “Yeah, yeah, I get it: Stikes Trikes,” and he forever called the boat, “Stikes Trikes.”

So with the flames, the name, and the literary allusion, Chuck stepped in to do his part, first spraying orange fringe on the flames, before going to work on the cowling. I had no idea what he intended to do; furthermore, neither did he until he started. He came up with the following. A scantily clad and most shapely babe rises up from a swampy netherworld, and holds in her hands a trophy—the trophy done in gold leaf. She is not alone. Around her wraps a most suggestive anaconda. And up on a hill behind her, observing with pride and approval, none other than Satan. Here are a few pictures of “Styx Tryx,” or as Dad would say, “Stikes Trikes.” Again, I would prefer to use photos of Dad with the boat, but this is all I have, i.e., me going for a joy ride on Lake Hamilton.

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Ketzer

05-06-2014, 06:19 AM

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(Steve Ketzer, Butch, and "Slim Chance")

Slim Chance: The 1977-78 school year, my senior year, was a hectic one. My wife and I went through a final separation and divorce, and I moved into an efficiency basement apartment in the Capitol Hill section of Denver from where I walked across town, back and forth to the university and to the Wazee Lounge and Supper Club where I worked as a cook, a job I would recommend to college students of little means—if you work as a cook, you’ll never go hungry. I had many friends by then, and we got together at another friend’s house to watch the Broncos (no T.V. at my place), as the Orange Crush was all the rage, despite getting whupped by the Cowboys in the Super Bowl, but not as badly as they got whupped in 2014 by the Seahawks.

One of my friends was a professor at the university who taught Cultural Anthropology—indeed, he saw everything through anthropological eyes. The first time he visited my apartment and saw my boat racing trophies, he threw up his arms and shouted, “Icons!” He spent considerable time holding and looking at the trophies as if examining ancient relics that held the keys to understanding some long gone civilization. He was a goofball, but a fun guy. Watching a Bronco game, he observed that, by their uniforms, mascot and cheerleaders, the Broncos represented the good in the world, and the Oakland Raiders all that was evil; this while the rest of us screamed for Lyle Alzado to tear the head off Ken Stabler.

Until my senior year, I had never taken out a student loan, but applied for one through the Veteran’s Administration, got approved, and immediately sent the money to Dad to purchase a brand new, but finish-it-yourself, C/D DeSilva runabout. At the same time, he had a new hydro built to run C-Service (also a finish-it-yourself boat), and Dad named his hydro “Slim Chance.” I’m terrible about remembering who built what, so I can’t say who made his hydro. We still had “Styx Tryx” for the C-Konig, but that was it, or all we intended to race. The plan was to downsize, race fewer boats, fewer classes, and thereby have more time to just watch and enjoy the races. In the spring of ’78, I opted out of the graduation ceremonies, but with ink still wet on my diploma, packed up the 1965 Chevy Van and headed across the seemingly infinite plains of eastern Colorado and Kansas at 55 mph (uh-huh, roaring into the malaise), hung a right at Salina, and headed south to finish the new boats.

("Slim Chance" and finishing the new DeSilva outside Dad's shop.)

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Ketzer

05-08-2014, 06:47 AM

Slim Chance (fer sure): While working the oil fields out of Gillette, Wyoming, Brother Charlie said, “There’s no oil shortage. Everywhere we drill, we hit oil, then just cap it off and move to the next hole.” Along with being a rough neck and an occasional boat racer, Charlie played guitar and wrote songs. He wrote one called, “Goober Gas,” about Jimmy Carter turning peanuts into gas (in more ways than one) that mocked turning corn into ethanol. Well, there may not have been an oil shortage, but there was a gas shortage, whether or not planned by politicians and the oil companies, and gas had gotten expensive. Then in 1979, the Iranians took our embassy in Tehran, exacerbating the situation, all of which negatively affected boat racing as working class folks struggled to stay above water, so to speak.

In his “Crisis of Confidence” speech in 1979, Carter said, “I'm asking you for your good and for your nation's security to take no unnecessary trips, to use carpools or public transportation whenever you can, to park your car one extra day per week, to obey the speed limit, and to set your thermostats to save fuel.... I have seen the strength of America in the inexhaustible resources of our people. In the days to come, let us renew that strength in the struggle for an energy-secure nation…” Would driving 200 miles to a boat race be considered an unnecessary trip, perhaps un-American?

Carter came into office under the banner, “The Grin will Win!” And win he did, but when he came face-to-face with the world, the grin was replaced with a concerned and frowning countenance reflecting, well, malaise. Small wonder the entire nation—driving 55, waiting in gas lines, suffering economic stagnation, counting the 444 days American hostages were held in Iran, watching the botched rescue attempt—suffered the same malaise. Owing to my university indoctrination, I voted for Carter, and while I ain’t no bunny-hugger, when he whacked the rabbit with a boat paddle, that was it for me.

So, there we were, the Ketzer Racing Team, at last with new boats, the latest engines, a new trailer with downsized camper to match, all dressed up with nowhere to go, or few places to go. Stan Leavendusky wasted precious fuel, though, when he drove down to Hot Springs to visit Dad, and he brought with him a bushel of the apples he grew in Kansas.

(Steve Jr. and Stan Leavendusky at Steve’s shop in Hot Springs; Steve, Steve Jr. and Butch the Bulldog, who, if you were on a creeper and had your hands full, could be counted on to come up and lick your face; the new Ketzer Racing Team rig.)

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The big race for us that summer of 1978 was at Alex. With the economy around Hot Springs in the tank, and not wanting to go back to work for Futrell, the best I could do with my degree in English Literature was land a job at the rubber band factory on Lake Catherine, a position that didn’t even require a high school diploma. When they hired me, they agreed to give me a week off later in the summer to go to a boat race. By the time Alex rolled around, I had risen to shift supervisor at the factory (it didn’t take much), and the supervisor of shifts was beginning to fear for his job. He said no boat race, and if I did go, I wouldn’t have a job when I got back. So be it. Dad and I were off to the races.

We raced the C-Service on runabout and hydro, and I can’t recall how we came out. I raced “Styx Tryx” with the C-Konig (maybe in an elimination heat), hit the clock well, hit the first turn near the front of the pack, and, as with “Soooie-Pig,” flipped it. Darn. That was to be my last race, and I flipped. First race 1968; last race 1978. I took “Styx Tryx” for a joy ride in 1984 on Lake Hamilton, right before I sold it to Jeff Goslee for chump change. By that time, Dad had already sold the rest of the boats, motors, and trailer. We were officially out of boat racing. Dad may have made a race or two in 1979, but I was out in San Diego escaping the malaise, seeking work on a tuna boat.

Ketzer

05-11-2014, 06:17 AM

Thanks, Dad: With a Honda 90 street bike stuffed in the back of the ’65 Chevy van, along with two huge box speakers hooked up to a cassette tape deck, I swung by Denver, picked up a college buddy—also an English Lit major—and we headed out to San Diego to become fisherman, a profession we knew nothing of, other than, perhaps, catching sunfish from a boat dock with a cheap Zebco and being most familiar with “Moby Dick” and “The Old Man and the Sea.” To be sure, we could write a critical twelve page essay on either one without notes. Walking the docks and being quick at study, we learned that if you weren’t Portuguese, married into a family, or a friend of a family, there was no prospect of landing a job on a tuna boat. And as for Option B, after checking, we couldn’t afford the initial union dues to become longshoremen. It was looking bleak, so I rode the Honda 90 from our digs in Ocean Beach over to Shelter Island and got a job at the first boat yard I entered, blowing paint and performing light maintenance on yachts. Lacking such skills, and turning up his nose at a position with “Yum-Yum Doughnuts,” my buddy returned to Denver, and I gave up the apartment to live in my van, rent-free, on Shelter Island and parked the Honda 90 in the boat yard.

Being homeless was not an unusual circumstance on Shelter Island. Another guy in the boat yard lived in his van, but most lived on boats anchored in the bay, typically old, beat up boats incapable of going anywhere. We took free showers where the fishermen came in or snuck into the San Diego Yacht Club, and could be counted on to show up at every bar’s happy hour to buy one beer (get one free) and fill up on hors d’oeuvres. It was a good life there for several months, but the work dried up to the extent we worked, at best, two days a week. After paying meagre child support, and even with the happy hour food, I was kind of going hungry, so I rode the Honda 90 out to Montgomery Field and walked into the first hangar I saw, which was Coast Aircraft, an aircraft repair station and Mooney dealership.

Standing out in the hangar with the Director of Maintenance, Don, I explained that while I didn’t have an A&P, I had experience working on aircraft and began listing what I could do, but what interested him most was the work I had just done, i.e., fiberglass work and painting at the boat yard, as they had a couple jobs coming in that required those skills—I just couldn’t get away from the painting. Anyway, Don asked me into his office to fill out a job application and said he’d think about it. When I handed him the forms, he did a double-take when he saw my name: “Steve Ketzer? Do you know an aircraft mechanic in Arkansas, also Steve Ketzer?” I told him, “Yeah, that would be my old man.” Don reached over for a set of aircraft logbooks, opened one, and pointed to the signature: Steve Ketzer.

Apparently, Twin-Bonanzas were popular around that area, as were the old Queen Airs, and Dan Futrell, back in Arkansas, had the market on those birds and sold several than ended up in San Diego; consequently, Dad’s name was all over those logbooks. I was hired on the spot and went to work the following day. (Thanks, Dad!)

Reading aircraft logbooks is every bit as interesting as reading “Tropic of Cancer.” A good set of aircraft records has logbooks going back to day one, even if day one occurred in 1947. You can get to know a plane’s history of owners, its mechanics, mechanical failures, overhauls, major alterations, accidents, and travels, from birth in Wichita, out to New Jersey, down to Florida (Inspect for corrosion!), west to Arkansas, farther west to California, and up to Alaska. A couple decades after San Diego and up in Fairbanks as an inspector, I had a few conversations that went like this:

“Steve Ketzer? Wow! According to my logbooks, you did a major repair on the left wing of my Cessna 180 back in 1962!”
“Well, I would have been twelve years old in 1962. That would have been my dad. Did he do a good job?”
“Oh, he did a great job.”

(Thanks, Dad.)

smittythewelder

05-12-2014, 12:15 PM

Steve, go up to the BRF Open Water forum and check out a thread I just started about boat names. I was just going to PM you, then thought others might have fun with it.

Ketzer

05-12-2014, 03:43 PM

Roger-Wilco, Smitty.

Ketzer

05-14-2014, 12:45 PM

Tools, Tests and Tricks: Between Don at Coast Aircraft and my Dad, I got talked into testing for the A&P, a license I was reluctant to get being one who obviously avoided responsibility. If you work under someone else’s signature, you’re not responsible; the FAA can’t touch you, and neither can the legal system. But, as I had just turned thirty, I reckoned it was time to man-up a little bit, and so I studied Dad’s old Zweng manuals and made many trips to the San Diego Public Library to check out books on basic electricity, hydraulics, welding and the like. I studied at night in my van—still preferring to camp on Shelter Island beneath the fragrant eucalyptus trees—and worked at Coast during the day.

I traded the Honda 90 to another aircraft mechanic, who was upgrading to all Mac and Snap-On tools, for a complete set of Craftsman tools, along with a top-box; not great tools for aircraft, but better than what I had, which was nothing. Still, I went in hoc to the Mac Man, buying ¼” drive sockets, swivel sockets, ratchets, palm ratchets, and extensions. Those swivel sockets were expensive, but as thin as they were, you still had to grind them thinner to fit on Continental and Lycoming exhaust nuts, which, of course, voided the warranty. You had to do what you had to do. The Craftsman wrenches were great for building special tools, grinding them down, heating them up with a torch and bending them, so that you had weird looking wrenches in your box, each with but one purpose in life.

Some tools were inexpensive, like the words of encouragement stuck on my top box and the wad of grey putty used to affix a tiny nut to a fingertip and thereby be able to reach up behind the instrument panel, position it on the threads of an instrument screw, post light, or what-have-you, and start it with the adjacent fingertip, all in the blind, all by feel. On newer aircraft, avionics and instruments can be loosened and slid out from the front of the panel; on older aircraft, they were installed from the back. That latter was a challenge resulting in the mechanic being upside down on the pilot or co-pilot seat with his head resting on the rudder pedals, fishing around back there to install an instrument, canon plug, vacuum or static line, tachometer cable, fuel or oil pressure line, and so on. A few years later, borrowing the title from Robert Pirsig’s book, I wrote a poem about that business, and it was published in the Coe College Review out of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Here tis:

Zen and the Art of Aircraft Mechanics

They like it behind the panel:
Cerebral problems leading to
embarrassing physical positions
not even sex could justify,
the unreadable wiring,
those clipped and hanging
(God alone knows where they went),
future problems encountered,
sealed brains, de-ice timers, so on,
the imposing black backs of instruments
with their fat plugs, multi-wired
bridge between realities,
the dexterity of the fingers,
the agility of the arm,
the endurance of the neck and back:
They like it behind the panel.

(From: Coe Review, Coe College, Issue 16, 1986)

Along with the brain power it takes to diagnose and fix problems, mechanics must learn the tricks, develop the dexterity and, more importantly, the determination. You might wonder, “Gee, how would you get a torque wrench on some of those lines?” Short answer: you wouldn’t, not unless you disassembled the aircraft surrounding it, or rigged up some kind of extension for the torque wrench consisting of a dozen extensions with a dozen universal joints leading to a crow’s foot on the end for which you’d need a very complicated conversion chart to convert the torque value. No, you just got it snug, and then a bit more, but not like some mechanics who followed the more-is-better principle of “Smoke tight and a quarter turn.”

In part, such tricky work can be blamed on engineers who never considered maintenance down the road. On the Piper Aerostar, they allowed so little room between the engine and the firewall, that to remove an aft cylinder, you had to remove the engine. Another example would be the bladder type fuel cells that, in time, developed leaks and had to be replaced. At the aircraft factory, they installed the cells and then the surrounding wing skins, but provided access via removable panels about the size of teacup saucers. To use Dad’s analogy of another human activity, it was like putting a marshmallow in a piggy bank, and, conversely, removing the marshmallow. Then, of course, you had the snaps, pipes, hose clamps, wet pumps, and so on to contend with. Beefy mechanics, like my buddy Sluggo in Little Rock, never had to do fuel cells—his arms were too big to fit in the holes.

A word more about dexterity. Later, working in Hot Springs, I had a couple customers from Little Rock. They were friends, each owned a Travel Air, a twin-engine Beechcraft with four cylinder Lycoming engines. They were orthopedic surgeons and liked to tinker on their airplane, so they liked to stay and “help” me. What amazed me about those guys was their lack of dexterity, their inability to work in difficult situations and start a nut or screw without getting it cross-threaded, for which I razzed them, saying, “Jeeze, and you guys are surgeons?” and suggested that maybe aircraft maintenance was the more difficult occupation, until one got his feelings hurt, and said, “Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah? Well, try changing spark plugs with the engine running!”

It was a valid point, and I have to give them kudos for their efforts toward maintenance; although sometimes they really screwed up the works. One of them had his plane in my shop, and I got into the nose baggage compartment to check the battery, took the panel off the battery compartment, and, holy cow, what a mess. Everything was wet with battery acid and there was corrosion everywhere. I figured the battery case must be cracked, but I removed the caps and the acid level was way high. I yelled, “Hey, Doc, did you add water to the battery?” He called back, “Yeah, and I’ve been meaning to mention that. I think there’s something wrong. I keep filling it up, but every time I check, it’s low.”

The worst thing about owners doing preventive maintenance, which they are allowed to do, is that most never make the required logbook entry. So that if something goes bad, an accident or violation, and the Feds step in, they look for the last name in the book. If it’s yours, and especially if you signed the 100 Hour or Annual Inspection, basically meaning that you’ve bought the whole kit and kaboodle, you find yourself sitting across the desk from an FAA Inspector. And while you may wear your best Clinton Deposition face and say, “I’m telling you, I did not do that,” the inspector’s expression, so very disappointed, says, “Lawd, Lawd, the cross I bear. Why do these people insist on blowing smoke up the FAA’s skirts?”

Here are pictures of Dad’s Kennedy Kit top box he used from his days at Douglas (the white patch says, “Testing Division, Douglas Aircraft, Co. Inc.”); a drawer full of tools from another time, but still useful; and my top box still with putty and quotes.

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bill boyes

05-14-2014, 03:08 PM

I had to go to Northrup school to get my A&P. How did to qualify to take the exams?

Ketzer

05-14-2014, 06:38 PM

I had to go to Northrup school to get my A&P. How did to qualify to take the exams?

I envy you going to Northrup, Bill. I qualified via CFR 65.77(b) as I wrote about on page 3, post #26 of this thread. Having worked at the airport with my father since the age of 12, I had more than the thirty months required to qualify.

bill boyes

05-15-2014, 01:16 PM

The A and P test are not easy tests. Then you have the practical which can be a little scarey. I admire you for passing the test with no formal schooling. I worked for TWA for 35 years . Started out as an avionics guy, Electrician, Rose up the ladder to Manager of Ground operation SFO. you and Master oil tell great stories. Keep them coming. How did you end up in Alaska?

Ketzer

05-16-2014, 07:31 AM

Thanks, Bill. Like Wayne, I’m writing this thread to honor my father who had many boat racing buddies. Quite a few follow BRF and wondered what became of him after he dropped out of racing, so that’s what this is about with, I hope, some amusing stories along the way.

About how I ended up in Alaska, well, that’s jumping ahead a bit, but I can always circle back. Around 1989, my wife Vicki and I were living in Little Rock where I worked at a repair station, Central Flying Service, as an A&P/IA and repair station inspector. In addition to the repair station where we worked on everything from Beech Skippers to business jets, Central sold new and used Beechcraft, had a classy charter operation, a pilot school, did contract line maintenance for the carriers flying into Little Rock: American, Northwest and Southwest (Delta had their own mechanic), and also had a nice restaurant and lounge. Central was (is) a popular FBO to drop into when crossing the U.S.

Anyway, Vicki and I were ready to move on. She applied to several hoity-toity grad schools that offered MBA programs (e.g., Stanford, Harvard), while I applied for a job with your TWA and as an inspector with the FAA. The deal was, whoever got accepted first, wherever it was, the other would throw in the towel and follow. To increase my odds of being accepted by the FAA, I volunteered for the Alaska Region. Of all those applications, the FAA was first to bite with a job offer at the FSDO in Fairbanks (Vicki ended up getting her MBA at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks). Funny thing, Bill, had I been hired by TWA, the job was out in San Francisco, and I might have ended up working for you.

But heading up to Alaska in 1990 with everything we owned packed into my 1977 Ford truck and Vicki’s Toyota Celica that was following on a tow-dolly (it was quite a drive, Little Rock to Fairbanks), I told her that after I got through training and secure in the job, I’d do a lateral transfer and have us out of Alaska in three years. Well, we got up there and loved Alaska! We lived in Fairbanks for 21 years. As Forrest’s mom said, “Life is like a box of chocolates…” So that’s the long answer to your short question.

Manager of TWA Ground Ops at SFO? Man, you were a big dog, Bill!

Bill Van Steenwyk

05-16-2014, 08:30 PM

STEVIE:

Your mention several times in this narrative of the company in Little Rock, "Central Flying Service" located on what was called, at the time, Adams Field in Little Rock, brings back a lot of memories. I don't know whether the time frame you were around there allowed you to know Claude Holbert, the owner, but I first met him in about 1948 when my Dad took flying lessons at Central. Don't remember now if Mr. Holbert was my Dad's instructor himself, but I do remember the first airplane ride I ever had from from Central in a V-Tail Bonanza with Mr. Holbert at the controls. The ride came about after my Dad had completed a lesson and my Mom and I were waiting in the lounge there to go home. Like most 12 year old kids during that time frame, I was airplane crazy from all the tales about pilots during WWII which had not been over very long at that point, and although I don't remember the specifics of just how that ride came about, but I would imagine that Claude saw me begging my Dad to take me for an airplane ride. As he was still a student pilot without a private license, he was not allowed to carry passengers then, so probably Claude took pity on him and to shut me up, took us up for a spin around the field in that Bonanza. From that time on I never wanted to do anything but fly whenever I had the chance.

Some years later in the mid-50's, I went to work at Adams field at Braniff Airlines as a ramp agent. Busting bags, working the radio and teletype, doing load forms, etc., along with some ticket agent work which I did not enjoy at all. I would much rather be on the ramp, working with the airplanes of the time, (2 DC-3 flights and 2 Convair 440's each way, east and west, each day). The old terminal where we were located was only about two city locks or so distance north of Central, and I spent a lot of time there between the times my work required me to be at the terminal. I finally scraped enough spare money together for some instruction in a BC-12 Taylorcraft with an instructor who over the next few years became a very close friend, and eventually helped me get some work in aircraft that increased my hours and also made me a much better pilot.

At the time, dual instruction at Central Flying Service in that type aircraft was 8.00 an hour and solo was 6.00 per hour, so my prime thrust was to solo so I could save the 2.00 per hour charge for dual instruction and start to build my time. Also at that time, 8 hours of dual instruction was required for the instructor to sign off for a student to solo. Chuck (my instructor) saw something in my flying ability, that if I were challenged with something, just made me more determined to do what was asked. I also enjoyed aerobatics, although the Taylor craft was not an aerobatic airplane by any means, you could spin and loop it (as you could many airplanes of that time) without danger if you did it the right way without negative, or too many positive "G's". At the time, during the 8 hr course of instruction the CAA (precursor to the present day FAA) required was spins, and the student has to show proficiency and be able to stop and then recover from a spin in I believe not more than one revolution. It was VERY hard for me to do that, not because I could not handle the airplane to stop it where needed, but I enjoyed the spins so much I did not want to stop. Chuck encouraged me to do it the right way by telling me that even though I had only completed 6 hours of the 8 required for solo, he would let me solo with the 6 if I did two spins and stopped the rotation where he wanted. That was good enough for me, as I really wanted to solo and get him out of the cockpit to lessen the cost of my flying, so we did the spins and when we landed at Adams Field after the hour of that instruction was over with, he got out and I went on my merry way. I look back on that day now after almost 55 years, as one of the most satisfying and good experiences of my life, as nothing does it for your self esteem to be able to take a hunk of tubing and fabric and make it do what you want.

Based on the instruction from Chuck, and his later going into the Aerial application business down the Arkansas River at Scott, Ar., (also just a few miles south of where I drove my first boat race at the LR Boat Club) I had to opportunity to take over one of his part time flying jobs while he was instructing, as with his small dusting/spraying company, he now no longer had the time to do what he had me take over for him, which was Power Line flying, which was flying along about 8-10 feet to the left side, and about 10 feet above the powerlines that crisscrossed the state of Arkansas. As I did not have my Commercial license yet, I was not able to charge for this flying, but just the thrill of it was worth it, in fact I would have probably paid the guy I was doing it for I enjoyed it so much. It was a challenge, for as you know, the state is filled with mountains, especially in the northern part, and the airplane I was using was a Piper Vagabond, with a 65HP engine, sometimes lacking in power when trying to climb the other side of the mountain you had just come down. VERY interesting flying, and I would be lying if I said that I sometimes came back home wondering "just how did I do that" and managed to get back without some pine tree branches in the landing gear. I also had the opportunity to help him with aerial application work, but without a Commercial, not able to be paid for that either. I really learned how to fly doing that work though, and look back on it as when I really learned how to fly an airplane, albeit an overloaded and marginally powered one when full of fuel and poison.

Without further thought wandering, I'll get to the purpose of this reminisce. Chuck, my instructor with Central Flying Service, went to work for Ozark Airlines in St. Louis in the mid 60's I believe. We had kept in touch over the years, and I was living in Kansas City at the time. He called me one New Years Eve and said he had an overnite trip in KC that evening and wanted to know if I wanted to go out with him and celebrate New Years. I already had plans, with someone we both know and you have mentioned in your story, namely Butch Leavendusky, so I suggested I pick him up and he would go to a party that Butch was having at his place in an old "grainery". It had been used to store grain at one time on his grandfathers's farm near where his Dad lived, and he had hired a band to play there and to celebrate New Years eve with a group of his boat racing friends.

Long story short, I picked Chuck up at the airport with the rest of his crew, co-pilot and flight attendant, and he asked if it was OK if they went along. "No problem, the more the merrier", and that is the story of my friend Chuck, who worked where you did at one time, and who introduced me to Eileen, the flight attendant on his flight, who has now been my wife for 40 years, celebrated this particular new year.

What to they say about the "degrees of separation?" Anyway, funny how some things in your life, that have been important to you, have also been in mine, namely a business called "Central Flying Service". I would have never met Chuck, if not for Central Flying Service, and consequently, Eileen.

Master Oil Racing Team

05-16-2014, 08:58 PM

This is what is so great about Boatracingfacts. I never knew that Bill Van was a pilot, and how he met Eileen, the story of Steve Ketzer, his wife and Dad, and how it tied in with Bill Boyes and the aircraft business. This is some really good stuff.

Ketzer

05-17-2014, 08:31 AM

I couldn’t agree more, Wayne, and, Bill Van, thanks for that fun story about you and Eileen (and her brother flew F4s!). And you at Central: Mm-mm-mm. Isn’t that something? While I was there, Claud’s sons, Dick and Don, held the reins. “Central Flying Service” sounds like a dinky, fly-by-night outfit, but it’s a huge operation in Little Rock.

Talk about coincidence, in my next post I was (am) going to attach a couple pictures from the Summer 1983 issue of the “Beechcraft Marketing Report,” that ran an article on the shop I ran in Hot Springs (not on me, but the guy who owned it). In that very same issue, there’s an article on “Central Flying Service” and the Holberts. I can’t scan, but I’ll snap a couple pictures and attach them, along with a paper weight all employees received when Central celebrated their 50th anniversary. The paper weight had their new logo that employees, being employees, poked fun at by calling it the “Pac Man.”

About Bill Van calling me “Stevie,” as long as my Dad was with us, I was called Stevie or Stevie Jr., which bothered me not a bit, and now makes me smile. New at Central, though, I was called Steve until one day after we of the night shift arrived and were standing around picking our nose and waiting for the shift transfer to wrap up that always took way too long. Being a self-starter, I took off to find something to do, upon which one of the mechanics asked the others, “Wonder what Stevie’s doin’?” After that, and for the next five years, I was known as “Stevie Wonder.”

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bill boyes

05-17-2014, 10:16 AM

Bill Van Steenwyk

05-17-2014, 03:03 PM

Stevie:

Since it has been so long since we have actually seen each other, I have a tendency to forget your are a mature man now, and probably just want to be called "Steve", so that is what it will be, from me anyway, from now on. Sometimes we have a tendency to forget just how much a young man wants to get older and get to be "grown up", and calling him by a "kid's" name when he is a man is not very respectful, so Steve it will be from now on if I feel the urge to post on this thread again.

By the way, I seem to remember you mentioned Jerry McMillan a couple of pages back. I have not seen or heard from him in probably 20 years, or his son either, who I used to talk to sometimes as Harry Zak did some motor work for him (the son) also when he was racing after Jerry quit. Did Jerry make it past the aerial application part of his career without great bodily injury or worse? If so is he still living, and where, if you know?

Bill Van Steenwyk

05-17-2014, 03:16 PM

I was hiring A&P mechanics at that time. How ironic. You ended up way better off working for the FAA.

Bill:

If you are talking about TWA, Eileen would agree with you wholeheartedly. She loved her job with Ozark, everything about it, and then when Carl Icahn, who had bought TWA not too long before as a cash cow to sell off the valuable pieces of same, also sold out a large group of employees pension funds, making her have about 1/2 the retirement income now she would have had before he robbed them. I am really surprised that someone has not shot him, as he has ruined many peoples lives. As many former Ozark and TWA employees we still know say, there is still hope.

It has always amazed me that theft, in some ways, is just smart business to others and the law.

The really ironic part of this whole buy-out/merger between Ozark and TWA,(we have heard from some in the know) was Ozark was the stronger financially company and it could have easily gone the other way, with Ozark being the buyer, but this was the time of airline deregulation, and many of the Ozark board members were small business men, farmers, and the like, and had a chance to cash out in a big way so took it. The way it has shaken out (desegregation) they were probably the smart ones.

Just a shame so many good employees of both companies had to pay the price for one man's insatiable greed, and the amazing part is he is still at it.

And Steve, forgive me for the above rambling and hijacking your post, but Bill is very correct, in my opinion anyway, you were and certainly are much better off now than if you had gone with TWA, or most any airline these days.

bill boyes

05-17-2014, 06:19 PM

Yes He even sold off most of TWA's spare parts down to the nuts and bolts..
He said our Pension funds were over funded. Now we get about half from the PGC.
When we got ride of the SOB then the creditors bought in a bunch of retreads who continued to mismanage. I know because I had to deal with the jerks. When I set in a meeting to meet the new Boss and he says TWA needs to stop GOLD PLATING it's Aircraft. HUH!!! Where the hell did they get you?

Lets go back to Boat racing history. I do not want to vent on this site.

Ketzer

05-18-2014, 06:29 AM

TWA was a disaster for many good people. I heard it was bad, but I guess you never really know the extent unless you’re in the middle of it. Well, circling back:

Doc and the Duke: I’ll return to boats, at least pleasure boats, in the next post, but I have to get back to Arkansas first. So Dad sent a letter to the FAA in San Diego listing my history of working under his supervision and recommending me for the exams. The inspector called him to verify, and, according to Dad, they had a great conversation about aviation in California and Arkansas. The A&P written exams were tough, but I passed them with a couple in the 90s and one in the 80s. Before taking the Oral and Practical exams, however, Dad had me scheduled to interview for a job in Hot Springs at a new maintenance facility being built by Dr. J.M. Fowler, a “Flying Dentist” who was in-line to become President of Lions International, i.e., International President, over the whole ball of wax. Doc Fowler had a Beechraft Duke and a Baron that he flew around the country on speaking engagements, and so the job was to first keep him flying and then take in outside work. On one side of the hangar, he was building a dental office with enough chairs for a hygienist and another dentist. To being with, the business was called, “Hangar One,” but later changed to “Flandco Aircraft” when a national business, also called “Hangar One,” threatened to sue.

Well, that was going from zero responsibility to mucho in a heartbeat, and I argued, “Darn, Dad, I don’t even have a license, yet, and you think I can run a shop? Besides, when I do get the A&P, I won’t be able to sign off annuals.” Typical of Dad, he replied, “Hell, yes, you can do it! If you get in a bind, Uncle Ed or I can help you out, and I’ll sign off your annuals until you build up enough time to get your Inspection Authorization.” Well, balls. I took a week off from Coast Aircraft, went back to Hot Springs, interviewed with Doc Fowler, and was hired, providing I passed my Oral and Practical. After getting my A&P, he promised to send me to Flight Safety via the Beechcraft factory in Wichita to be trained on the Duke, and then to the Lycoming factory in Williamsport, PA, to learn the engines. Such offers can’t be refused. I returned to San Diego and gave notice at Coast. Don didn’t mind; he was happy for me.

I have a couple anecdotes about factory training and Flight Safety. The two factories, Beech and Lycoming, seemed worlds apart. The Beech factory complex appeared new, and I was amazed at some of the technology, chemical milling, and the like. In comparison, the Lycoming factory, in an old, redbrick building in the industrial part of Williamsport, looked straight out of the 1930s. They built great engines, but everything just seemed antiquated and dark. Before being hired by Doc Fowler, I was considering using my degree to get into technical writing. I asked one of the Lycoming instructors, a venerable technician who had obviously paid his dues many times over, where they got their technical writers, and he said, “From the field. We figure it’s easier to turn a mechanic into a writer, than a writer into a mechanic.”

As for the Flight Safety classes, they can be brutal, much tougher than any college course I ever took. Each day was a full eight hours of rapid lecture, only interrupted by research, problem solving and on-the-spot grilling. At the end of the day, my classmates and I emerged drained, but with heavy manuals under our arms for an additional two or three hours of homework and, more likely than not, a take-home test. Over the years, in addition to the Duke, I went to Flight Safety on the Westwind 1124 business jet, the Beech 1900, and Human Factors. It’s expensive and humbling, but great training. Along with the daily tests, you had to pass an end of course exam, and you sure didn’t want to go home and say, “I, uh…didn’t pass.” Except for quickie systems and paperwork training to perform contract maintenance on American, Northwest and Southwest, I never went to school on large aircraft like the Boeing 700 series, but I imagine it was a real bear.

They say the A&P license is a license to learn. Well, the learning curve at Hangar One proved to be immediate and enormous. I was shop foreman, lead mechanic, parts man, janitor, occasional riding mechanic and co-pilot, and head of marketing and advertising, a big frog in a puddle. But, as Dad predicted, I did it, and a few years later, Doc and I were in the Summer 1983 Issue of the “Beechcraft Marketing Report.”

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I had the opportunity to fly with Doc on several speaking engagements in the Duke, N123JF (the JF for Jim Fowler), including trips to San Antonio, Las Vegas, and Milwaukee. Coming back from one trip, we stopped in Little Rock for fuel, and I wrote a poem about flying at night.

FLYING AT NIGHT WITH DOC FOWLER

There's nothing quite like night from a cockpit,

"November 1-2-3 Juliet Fox, do you have information Lima?"
"Juliet Fox, affirmative Lima."

accelerating toward an unseen point, V2, beyond stopping,

"3 Juliet Fox, taxi into position and hold."
"Juliet Fox, position and hold."

turbochargers screaming harmony (Lycoming TIO-541-E1C4),

"King Air 2-4 Tango, exit Bravo, contact Ground 1-2-1-niner. Good day."
"Good day."

watching needles climb and settle half a needle's width
away from red lines, and that is, manifold pressure 41 inches,
2900 RPM, right on the money, fuel, oil, vacuum pressures in the green,

"1-2-3 Juliet Fox, cleared for take-off, make right hand turn out."
"Juliet Fox, rolling, right hand turn out."

airspeed alive, temperatures climbing, lift, gravity, thrust and drag doing battle,

"Little Rock tower, 4-6 Yankee Echo, downwind, runway 2-2."
"Yankee Echo, extend downwind, follow 737 on short final, caution wake turbulence."
"Yankee Echo, extending downwind."

then airborne, the temporary victory, gear up and locked, throttles coming back,
fuel boost off, climbing, banking right, seeing strobes at 2 O'clock,

"1-2-3 Juliet Fox, you have traffic 2 O'clock, descending from three thousand."
"Juliet Fox has traffic in sight."
"Juliet Fox contact Departure 1-2-5-6-5. Good day."
"1-2-5-6-5. Good day, sir."

leveling off at 4,500 feet for the short hop, engaging the autopilot, watching instruments,
the perfect stars, the paltry lights of humanity, the Stygian separation,
indicated airspeed 207 knots, the music of Morse code
(Hot...Springs...V-O-R); over Benton, now,
glow of Hot Springs on the horizon,

"Hot Springs traffic, Duke 1-2-3 Juliet Fox, ten mile final, Runway 2-3."

scattered light carved by the black lakes' void, Hamilton, Catherine,
mixture and props forward, slowing, descending;

"Hot Springs traffic, Duke 1-2-3 Juliet Fox, five mile final, Runway 2-3."

now key the mic three times, and runway lights come on outlining a rectangular abyss,
like flying into a video game, boost pumps on, flaps at approach, gear down,
three green, throttles coming back, slowing, descending,

"Hot Springs traffic, Duke 1-2-3 Juliet Fox, short final, Runway 2-3."

slowing, sinking, over the threshold, throttles all the way back, sinking, sinking,
flare it out, back with the yoke, back, back, back...down, like sliding silk on glass,
rolling out, hold the nose off, let it down easy, touch the brakes, touch them,
get on them and make that first turnoff.

"Hot Springs traffic, Duke 1-2-3 Juliet Fox, clear of active."

A few more pictures. Dad and Uncle Ed with an out-of-town Duke over at Futrell’s; Vicki in Doc’s Duke (We met in a Business Law class at the local community college where I was trying to learn how to run a business); and a friend, Mike, after a ride in N123JF.

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Ketzer

05-18-2014, 09:17 AM

Sorry, Bill Van, I forgot to answer your question about Jerry McMillian, but, no, I lost track of him and his family long ago...been longer than 20 years for me.

smittythewelder

05-18-2014, 10:07 AM

(Second attempt to simply post a reply: I have a new laptop, pre-loaded with Windows 8 which is just awful!)

Mr. Boyes, I'm guessing you knew a TWA Mechanic at San Fran, Clint Groves, who put together a wonderful picture book of old propliners, with photos he had taken or collected. When I got the book, I showed it to a pal who owns a machine shop here, and (per Bill Van's reference to stages of separation) it happened that he knew Clint Groves. He then began telling Clint Groves stories; evidently the man was quite a character.

A shame what happened to TWA (and a lot of other companies destroyed by modern era robber-barons). As I told Steve in a PM, My dad was a career airline pilot. First with TWA on DC-3s out of LAX, then post-war furloughed and joined Pacific Northern, the biggest carrier to and within Alaska, finishing off with Western, which bought PNA in '67. During the late Fifties, the golden era of air travel, Pacific Northern primarily operated Lockheed L749A Constellations, some of them bought from TWA. In fact, TWA did the engine overhauls for PNA, and the old mechanics tell me that when TWA dropped that service and PNA had to send their engines to another rebuilder, the results weren't nearly as good. Anyway, as an airline employee, Dad could get interline passes for cheap family travel, albeit on a standby basis. I still vividly remember one scene, from a passenger window of, I think, a Northwest DC-6B, as we joined the tail-end of a great long line of four-engine propliners waiting to take off from Chicago, Midway. Our ride was, for a few minutes, sideways to the rest of the seemingly endless line of aircraft waiting on the taxiway, and little 12-year-old Smitty stared at those planes, each with four props turning, and almost all of them were TWA 649 and 749 Connies. What a wonderful time that was, in so many ways.

bill boyes

05-18-2014, 11:19 AM

Yes Groves was a Mechanic for TWA out of SFO. An odd duck but very smart. Has lots of aviation history.

Ketzer

05-20-2014, 05:31 AM

Smitty and Bill: I never heard of Clint Groves, so I got on Google to see if I could find his pictures and stumbled onto his “Tales from the Hangar.” That guy is pretty darn good.

Styx Tryx Redux: At Dad’s shop back in Hot Springs, except for Styx Tryx that hung from the rafters on ropes and pulleys and the C-Konig on a stand, the race boats and trailer were gone. I traded him my new DeSilva runabout for the picklefork and the Konig, thinking I might race again, but it was not to be. Although he didn’t need the room, Dad wanted the boat and motor out of his shop. I think he was disappointed as to how it all ended and didn’t want to be reminded. On the other hand, Mom was pleased, as she had spent far too many years alone and worrying about us. In the meantime, though, Styx Tryx hung from the rafters, and we were together when I first saw it hanging. I made the mistake of asking, “You think it’s secure up there?” Upon which, Dad climbed on his desk, reached out, grabbed the picklefork handles, swung into the air, and started doing chin ups. It didn’t surprise me that he could still do chin-ups at 57, but I was amazed the whole thing didn’t come crashing down.

Dad had a big heart, and he was a kid at heart. I just flashed on another memory. Visiting him at Futrell’s one time, we stood in the hangar doorway while waiting on Bill the pilot/salesman to bring up a Bonanza. Dad had the tow-bar and we were just shooting the breeze, and here came Bill taxiing up fast. We could see him smiling. He slowed down but didn’t stop, and kept creeping closer and closer with the spinning propeller. Neither Dad nor I moved a muscle, but just stared deadpan at him. Finally, Bill shook his head and put on the brakes. Dad looked over at me and grinned. Then he reached out and, with the prop still turning, pressed his index finger to the spinner —Bill was that close.

After I blew through the 1970s on this thread, Wayne was kind enough to send me a number of NOA and AOF race results from those early years that show how the Ketzer Racing Team performed, and I’ll attach some of those below. Some things I had forgotten, like my dad being an AOF officer at one point, where we raced, how we did at races and toward national high point. Others I confused, like being correct about winning the B-Hydro race at the Southern Championships in 1971, but wrong about the location: the race took place at Jackson, Mississippi, not Vicksburg. And while it feels good to see my name pop up, what’s really nice is to read all the familiar names of people who raced, many of whom I wrote about.

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Ketzer

05-24-2014, 06:41 AM

Live to Ride: Early in this thread, there’s a photo of my dad on a motorcycle in Okinawa, circa 1947. Since being trained as a motorcycle scout with the 1st Armored Division—that was prior to volunteering for the Rangers in North Ireland—he was never without a bike, i.e., a Harley. I also had one, not the ’69 Super Glide that I sold in Denver, but a ’65 Panhead dresser that I left in Dad’s shop when I went to San Diego. So while we were no longer racing boats together, we often rode motorcycles through the hills of Arkansas to somewhat satisfy that need for speed: Dad after taking a buddy for a ride in Okinawa; his Harley in Hot Springs; and getting ready to take my kids for a ride.

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Now, nothing against the H.O.G. folks, but before they came into being leading American to discover, or perhaps re-discover, the Harley-Davidson, which put everyone and their brother, sister and mother on a Hog, you could buy a used Harley for cheap and a basket case for next to nothing. Dad saw the ’65 Panhead for sale in the newspaper and talked me into at least taking a look. I didn’t like what I saw, but he had the ability to see a diamond in the rough, so I bought it (with him fronting me part of the money), and blowing blue smoke all the way, rode it to his shop. The bike was mine for $1,200. A local and trusted motorcycle shop overhauled the engine, while I went to work tearing it down to the frame, fixing this, replacing that and painting it. During winter of the next few years, I removed pieces, even the fragile pot-metal logo and fender caps, and sent them to Brown’s Plating in Paducha, Kentucky, to be re-chromed—they always did a great job. Several years down the road, I got hard up for cash and sold the Panhead for $1,500 “and” a very nice Sportster. During the same time, I built up a little Yamaha 80 for my son. A few before and after pictures of the Panhead: the day I rode it to Dad’s shop; Vicki on it at my trailer on Lake Hamilton; and me at Fowler’s (Doc’s Baron and Caddy in the background; while working there, I kept the motorcycle “Hangared”).

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When Dad turned 58, he decided to seriously get back in shape and hit the airport at sunrise to speed march around the runways. One of his doctor buddies advised that he should have a physical before he got too carried away, so he went to another airplane owner, a doctor from India who was a heart specialist—one benefit of working on GA aircraft is that you get to know a number of doctors and get free diagnoses out on the hangar floor. You also get to know a number of lawyers, but I won’t go there. The doctor felt his abdomen and immediately sent him to intensive care. Dad had an abdominal aortic aneurism. The aorta was bulging and, according to the doctor, about to pop. They lowered his blood pressure, got him resting, and scheduled surgery in two days, which was right before New Year’s Eve. Dad asked if the surgery couldn’t wait until after the holidays, but was told definitely not and that he was lucky to be alive as it was. They got him patched up, and awaking his first whispered words to brother Charlie were, “I got to pee.” Charlie said, “Go ahead, Dad, they’ve got a catheter in you.” He dodged that bullet, but there was something just a sinister waiting in the wings. A picture of his grandson and the Yamaha 80, and the aforementioned Sportster.

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Master Oil Racing Team

05-24-2014, 08:26 PM

That guy your Dad took for a ride in his motorcycle had a look on his face more like a prisoner than a buddy Steve. Did your Dad ever comment on that picture?

Ketzer

05-25-2014, 05:33 AM

Yeah, he did, Wayne. He said he took that little guy on some crazy rides, went so fast and laid it into left turns so hard the sidecar came off the ground, but his buddy’s expression never changed, no fear, no joy, just the same expression you see in the photo.

smittythewelder

05-25-2014, 08:39 AM

You sure are right about Harleys, and lots of other prime vehicles, having been cheap forty five and fifty years ago. The trouble was, once we got 'em cheap and had fun with 'em, we SOLD them. Sold them cheap. Walk around any summer weekend carshow/cruise anywhere in the country and listen to the old men: "Oh man, I HAD one of those! It was mint! Never shoulda sold it! Worth eighty grand today, just the way it was!" I have all too many such stories. One was about the very nice 1960 Duo-Glide, bought for $850 from a machinist who had blueprinted the engine. Had some good times on that big tub . . . once I managed to get it started. The '60 panhead was among the first of the Harleys to have a lot of compression, and one of the last to be kick-start-only! It had the stock ignition and carb, and was cold-blooded. Good thing I was young!

smittythewelder

05-26-2014, 08:56 AM

Where I live now turns out to be a fairly good place to watch airplanes fly over. It's fifteen miles from any controlled airspace and seems to be a corridor for people going from here to there with private aircraft. Also, the Boeing flying club sends their students out here to practice, so there's freguently a 150 overhead doing stall approaches and such. Not too long ago I heard a good noise and looked up to see a B-17 slowly making its way south from some event, shortly followed by a B-24, neither of which I had ever seen in the air.

Two days ago I was standing out on the property with a much younger fella when we heard a good sound and looked up to see, wonder of wonders, a P-51 passing by. We simultaneously exclaimed, "P-51!!," and then stood silently watching an listening as it passed out of sight and earshot. My friend said, "What a good sound those engines make!" Pulling the rank of age, I said, "That airplane is owned by somebody who has to be pretty careful with his valuable old machine, and that engine was just loafing. And even when the P-51s were new, 45" manifold pressure was take-off power, and the 5-minute combat emergency maximum was about 60" MP. To hear the REALLY good sounds from those engines, you had to have been standing on the front straight at Seafair in the Sixties or Seventies, when six or seven Unlimited hydros, all on the nitrous and making 130 inches, made their run for the first turn." That was a sound and a sight so good that I think if I had expired on the spot it would have been with no regrets. I feel bad for all the young guys today who'll never get to experience some of the great days of piston engines. What old guy, having lived with sounds like the glorious roar of a Lockheed Constellation with four shorty-stack Wright radials each making 2500 horses of take-off power, could be happy in a world of Tesla cars and gas turbine Unlimited hydros? At least we still have Top Fuelers. And Harley-Davidsons.

Actually, there's still one place you can go hear the sound of big round engines and V-12s running flat-out. The Reno Air Races. If you have never attended this event, see it while you're still able.

Ketzer

05-26-2014, 03:21 PM

Yeah, Smitty, there’s nothing like that sound. I was lucky enough to land a composite structures course in Reno (taught by a lady, structural engineer type, who worked on the Lear Fan). The course wrapped up a few days before the races, and I had to get back to work. While I didn’t see the races, I did go out after class to watch some testing and trials.

In Fairbanks, hearing a DC-6 takeoff and eat up three quarters of the runway in ground effect before easing into the sky was like hearing a battalion of Banditos hitting town on Harleys. Still, there’s something to be said for touching the start button on a Falcon 10 and then having that finger ready on the abort switch as it—BooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!—sends the interstage turbine temperature toward the red, but stops just short of it (OOOOOOOOOO!), like some giant Casper back there, and then, “Starting #2.”

Master Oil Racing Team

05-26-2014, 07:33 PM

You could also have heard that sound of six two twelve of them spaced with about four feet in between mounted on the frame of diesel trucks in the sixties and seventies. The primary power source for the powerful triplex pumps used in fracing (yes fracing.....not fracking....which sounds obscene), were Allisons, Merlin and Rolls Royce engines from WWII. They had the power to push the triplex pumps up to 10,000 psi. The pumps had to be small bore in big castings to be able to handle the pressure, hence multiple pumps and powerplants to put out enough volume for a high pressure high volume frac. The pumps were all manifolded together with a single large high pressure pipe to the well head. Everything was precisely monitored through a single primary control, but each truck had its own operator at the controls. Early days were hand signals. Later there came headsets. If the sand being pumped at a very high rate did what is called a "screen out" (meaning the sand packed off} psi immediately jumped through the roof and pumps had to be shut down. All pumps had safety pop off valves to relieve pressure and they were basically valves with nails used for shear pins. The sound of a good successful frac job was a half dozen or more of these engines running at high speed and it was a very unique sound. For a lot the workers, they just took it as part of their job, and everyone had to wear ear protection. After a couple of hours of pumping it could get old, but today it is a nostalgic sound of the past.

Ketzer

05-29-2014, 07:08 AM

Island Queen: During the 80s, Dad went through several motorhomes, each one larger than the last—fix it up, trade it off. He, Mom and sometimes Uncle Ed vacationed in the Carolinas and along the Gulf Coast into Florida, always with a .45 semi-automatic under the driver’s seat as life was getting dicey, especially in southern Florida, but their favorite spot was around Apalachicola on the panhandle. He also bought an older houseboat that he kept docked at Mountain Harbor on Lake Ouachita. The houseboat easily slept eight and was the venue for many a party, one of which he later gave for my buddies from Central Flying Service who arrived with girlfriends and ski-boats so that we traversed the lake like an carrier convoy. I tried repeatedly to tumble up and barefoot ski behind a Mastercraft boat, and while I tumbled up okay and skidded successfully on my back and butt, feet forward, at 45 mph, I fell on my face every time I tried to plant my feet and never did get up. The abuse my body suffered wasn’t appreciated until the following day, at which time I understood that recovering from such activity wasn’t as easy at 38 as it was in my 20s. Dad was supposed to be the Captain and sober chaperone for that party, but was too sick when the day arrived. Adamant that the show must go on, he tapped Uncle Ed for the job. Except for a badly gashed foot, courtesy of some fool’s broken bottle (not one of our fools) that required a drive to Hot Springs and several stitches, the party was free of disasters. Mostly, though, trips on the Island Queen were sober, leisurely crawls around Lake Ouachita to enjoy nature and anchor in a remote bay to BBQ. Mom and the Island Queen before we got it all cleaned up.

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While I was still in Hot Springs with Doc Fowler, Dad decided what we needed to do was rescue Ford Falcons and Rancheros from junk yards, and we did put several back on the road. Being an old Ford mechanic, Uncle Ed was in the middle of it, and I took over blowing paint. We built up a ’62 sedan for my brother Jerry’s daughter (being embarrassed with the ride, she quickly traded it), and a ’63 Falcon Ranchero—straight six, three on the tree, no seat belts, steel dash—that ended up with my son when he graduated from high school, and he survived the experience. The queen of the fleet was a ’57 Ranchero, but it was gone in a hurry—someone made Dad an offer he couldn’t refuse. With big brother, Jerry, and a few Falcons:

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About blowing paint, while I painted parts and pieces on airplanes, I had never done a complete paint job until a local boys ranch with a F-9 Panther on static display called Futrell’s asking for a bid. Dad declined the job, but suggested they call Hangar One, so I ended up doing it on the weekends. The prep work was a real mother and masking outside was no fun, but the paint scheme was easy; enough of the existing lines remained that they were easily recaptured. Dad came out to drag hoses when I sprayed, a task I did for him a hundred times, and despite the occasional pine needle or bug that had to be plucked from the paint, it turned out pretty good. And, man, the $300 sure came in handy! Wrapping it up: Dad rolling hoses and me in the cockpit.

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After five years with Doc Fowler, I was ready to move on and took a job up in Little Rock with Central Flying Service, discussed a couple pages back in this thread. Central provided an opportunity to be trained and work on turbine powered aircraft, from King Airs and business jets to MD-80s and 737s. But on the nightshift anything and anyone could drop in on us. One night the astronaut Gene Cernan taxied up to the hangar in a Cessna 421 suffering the bang-bangs (bad magneto). When we had him fixed up, Cernan joked about paying his bill with Moon rocks. One of the mechanics replied, “Gee, I don’t know, Mr. Cernan…we got a lot of rocks in Arkansas.” At night also came the literal “fly-by-night” cargo operators in Piper Navahos, Beech 18s and DC-3s who had no intention of getting work performed at Central until the FAA snuck out and hung an un-airworthy tag on their airplane. Anyway, wrapping up a Lear 35 at Central:

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After the mid-80s, Dad’s health, along with his vision, began to fail. He made many trips to the VA Hospital in Little Rock, and every time he went, he saw a different doctor, and each one came up with a different diagnosis and prescribed different drugs while failing to remove him from the existing drugs. He was taking pills to counteract pills, to counteract pills, and none of them did any good. At last a doctor, dumfounded by all the drugs, removed him from everything, admitted him to the hospital, ran a battery of tests, and determined he had leukemia. It took the VA two years to come up with the correct diagnosis.

The VA hospital was not a pleasant place: it was located in a bad part of town and had such poor security that people came in off the streets to roam the halls, enter rooms, rifle through patient’s belongings, and take whatever they wanted. Many of the painful tests, spinal taps and the like, were performed by interns and new nurses, the veterans serving as Guinea pigs. While it made me angry, Dad never complained, had faith in the VA, and said they were doing the best they could with what they had. I didn’t think so, and still don’t. It was post-Vietnam; America was between wars and had little regard for its Veterans. For all the current political bluster about taking care of our veterans, just watch what happens when we leave Afghanistan. Today, the VA fiasco is a scandal and fills the news; tomorrow, such poor treatment won’t even make the back pages. Dad was a combat, Purple Heart, prisoner of war veteran; I can only imagine how veterans with fewer points were treated.

Even so, he had good days along with the bad and lived with leukemia for many years. It never stopped him. Dad continued working a full week, still worked in his shop, still went out on the Island Queen. Not only that, he took in another major project, an old Chris Craft cabin cruiser that he got for $150 and a chainsaw. The boat was half-rotten, and could only serve as a template to build a new one, but that’s all he needed. Uncle Ed and I went with him to haul the Chris Craft back to the shop; we glanced at each other and raised our eyebrows when we saw it. Uncle Ed wasn’t doing too good himself. He had a lung removed and had a heart condition (Uncle Ed never stopped, either). Vernon Ashley was doing okay and often stopped by. Although very poor at woodwork, I helped on the Chris Craft when I was around, and certainly when Dad was up in the shop on one of his good days. I removed all the instruments and took them to a buddy, Bill, at Central Flying Service who worked in the instrument shop. Bill rebuilt the instruments and repainted the faces, and in exchange, I performed an annual inspection on his Stinson. Here’s a picture of the Chris Craft the day we got it and a work-in-progress picture.

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Bill Van Steenwyk

05-29-2014, 10:10 PM

Steve:

I may have a solution to the question about the builder of your Hydro, STYX TRIX:

As you, and some of the other readers of BRF know, Stan "Butch" Leavendusky, has had a rough several years with various health problems. As friends for 40+ years, I had been wanting to visit him since his hospital stay back in December, but like all good intentions, different things had interfered with the 380 mile trip to Little Rock. After being notified by his wife that he was having some further problems, I just decided that most things can be put off for awhile, except that type friendship, so made the trip down to see him and just got back about 10:15 this evening.

While there I told him about your thread on BRF, but due to some computer problems that they were having, was unable to get to the site to show him what had been posted about your family. I am sure he will look at it in the next several days when they get the computer up and running again. We were talking about the mystery you had mentioned as to the origin of the boat, and he said that it was surely his Hydro that he had built when he made the venture into Hydro's for a short period during that time frame. He either sold the boat outright, or traded it for something to your Dad, and after looking at the photos again after I got home I am in agreement with what he said as I was there for a time when the boat was being constructed, and also when it was rigged out and painted for the first time. The boat was built by Richard Krier from measurements taken from a Butts Hydro that was owned by Tom Berry. Rich also built another one at the same time, and possibly John Dortch Jr. was the customer for that one. Both were built in the basement of one of Rich's brothers over a winter.

Butch made the comment that he never thought a Hydro would be so hard to drive, as he was upside down and out the side of it several times while he owned it, so he decided to concentrate on just Runabouts which he had been, and continued to be quite successful with. Looks like your Dad was not able to tame it for you either. As you may know the Krier family is famous for their Runabouts, and not really for their Hydro's, but they have been very successful in construction of them as they built 3 boats for me that I won a National Championship with, along with most of the records for the class, and a Hall of Champions induction. Also after I quit driving, they built a 125 Hydro for myself and Todd Brinkman that Todd's son, Tim, won both a National and World UIM Championship with in 2002. So you probably had one of the very first Krier Hydroplanes built for anyone outside the family. If I am not mistaken, they built one or so for another Krier brother who did not race very long.

Hopefully with this information the mystery of where it came from, and the builder, is solved. One less thing to ponder over.

ADD: Also had a thought about the builder of "Slim Chance". Your Dad knew Tim Chance, and Tim Built some boats during this time frame, and given your Dad's penchant for naming boats for something familiar, it could be something he built, although its hard to be sure without asking him. (Tim)

Ketzer

05-30-2014, 03:47 PM

Thanks for the info, Bill Van. So, according to Butch Leavendusky, I was again in a boat prone to flip! Guess I wasn't as bad as I thought. Well, "Styx Tryx" was fast on the straights, but dicey in the turns, for sure. Great info about the building of that boat, and I think you're correct about "Slim Chance," too, i.e., a Tim Chance boat. Very sorry to hear Butch is having health problems, and here's wishing him better days ahead. The next time you talk to him, give Butch best regards from the remnants of the Ketzer Racing Team.

Ketzer

06-08-2014, 06:10 AM

Steel Magnolia: About the time I was heading north to Alaska for a job with the Feds, a job that Dad encouraged me, indeed prodded me to apply for, he was swapping the “Island Queen” for a steel hulled cabin cruiser that he appropriately named “Steel Magnolia.” He rented a slip at a new island of boat docks under construction at Brady Mountain on Lake Ouachita. Once the dock was completed, he and Uncle Ed went to work on their portion of it, installed a gated, lattice fence, lights, overhead fan, storage areas, deck furniture and the like. I spent a good portion of my first two years with the FAA down in Oklahoma City going through training while Vicki remained in Fairbanks to hold the fort down and pursue her MBA. On most Fridays after class, I packed up the rental car and headed to Hot Springs to visit the folks and do what I could around the house to help out: mowed lawns, cleaned gutters, painted and the like. Dad and I made trips to the boat dock to watch the ongoing construction. At last finished, he moved the “Steel Magnolia” into position and the floating second home was completed. He and Mom spent many a weekend out there, as did Uncle Ed with his family.

Dad’s health was up and down, good days and bad, with frequent trips to the VA hospital in Little Rock. With all that, and being half-blind, he and Mom—she being the official navigator and reader of road signs, as he could no longer see them—drove the motorhome out to Las Vegas to visit his grandson who was in the Air Force. He talked about driving up to Alaska in the motorhome, but didn’t like it when I suggested he take Charlie or Uncle Ed along to help out. Dad made it clear that he did not require any help.

In January of 1993 during my third year with the FAA, I was selected as a team member for the recertification of Air France’s aircraft repair station in, natch, Paris, France. The FAA certifies foreign repair stations in order to work on U.S. registered aircraft, and such repair stations are a feather in the cap for those countries as the United States, at least at that time, led the world in aviation (and space and medicine and science and technology). Foreign aviation regulations, even China’s, are patterned after ours, and the lingua franca for air traffic controllers worldwide is English…not French, Chinese, Russian, Spanish or Pashto, but English. Indeed, many foreign air traffic controllers are trained in Oklahoma City. Those foreign repair stations require recertification by the FAA every couple years, and the company, in this case Air France, pays the U.S. Government a chunk of change to do it. An IFO (FAA International Field Office), of which we have several around the world from Singapore to Frankfurt, does the recert, but those guys are frequently backed up and begging for help; thus, inspectors from field offices in the U.S. are asked to volunteer. So, I, from a Podunk field office in Fairbanks, Alaska, headed off to Paris, France. Now, I wasn’t totally ignorant of Air France, as I had geographic responsibility for major carriers that flew into Fairbanks, including Delta, Northwest and Air France’s 747 cargo planes that made a fuel stop before hopping over to Japan.

In order to save U.S. taxpayers as much money as possible, FAA inspectors moving around the world on business are required to travel first class, i.e., on the jump seat, doing what they call an “En Route Inspection.” Talk to any upper-level FAA muckety-muck, and they will tell you the FAA does not use air carriers for transportation, that they are conducting a required inspection. However, they will not tell you such inspections are often created to move Inspector X from point A to point B…and that’s really not a bad thing. Mechanical failures aside, many aircraft accidents probably would not have happened had an inspector been sitting on the jump seat, not that they know more about flying than the company pilots—they don’t—but because with FAA onboard, the pilots are paying strict attention and doing everything by the book. Two examples where accidents might have been averted: the Colgan accident near Buffalo, and the Asiana flight that landed short in San Francisco.

The jump seat hierarchy goes like this: The FAA can bump deadheading company crewmembers; the NTSB can bump the FAA; Secrete Service can bump the NTSB. If you see someone in a suit heading into the cockpit with the crew, no worries, it’s either FAA, NTSB or Secret Service (deadheading airline pilots are required to wear their uniforms). So I scheduled en route inspections and reserved jump seats from Fairbanks to Seattle; Seattle to Atlanta, with an overnight there; and then Atlanta to Paris. Those were the best laid plans. Things went awry in Seattle, though, when the United 747 crew discovered two inoperative items that together grounded the aircraft. Every air carrier aircraft has a Minimum Equipment List (MEL), that allows them to fly with certain items inoperative, but there are caveats: You may fly with X inop if Y is operative; or Y inop if X is operative, but you may not fly if both X and Y are Tango Uniform. I hung with the crew and talked to the mechanics for a couple hours, but they had to have parts flown in (don’t know why they couldn’t get them in Seattle of all places), so I decided get out of Dodge and went to check the boards for a flight east. Walking through the gate area where the passengers sat getting grouchy—and Eileen might appreciate this—I overheard a passenger say, “A flight attendant told me it’s no big deal, but there’s some big FAA dude onboard, so they’ve gotta fix it.” That’s not only fair, but standard operating procedure: blame the Feds.

The best case scenario for an en route inspection is to arrive early for the first flight of the day, do the walk around with the first officer, inspect the exterior, observe the ramp rats, talk to the mechanic if one is around, then go inside and talk to the flight attendants, inspect their Flight Attendant Manuals for currency, inspect the cabin, the airworthiness certificate and registration, the aircraft logbook, the MEL, look at the crew’s pilot and medical certificates, and make apologies to the captain (so you’ll be sure to get a free lunch). You do not, as an FAA Inspector, get in their way or slow them down; they’re on a tight schedule and it must not be disrupted unnecessarily. If you ground their airplane, buddy, you better be right, or all hell will come down on you, as it tumbles their schedule and costs a fortune, a fortune the FAA will be forced to reimburse if you were in the wrong. Best case scenarios aside, you walk up to the counter, show your credentials, ask if the jump seat is available (no NTSB or Secret Service), get on with the crew, exchange credentials with them, talk to the lead flight attendant, flip through the logbook, and then you’re strapping in and testing your oxygen mask and headset: off to the races, V2 and rotate. And that’s how I ended up on a Delta flight to Cincinnati, which was at least in the right direction.

Walking down the concourse in Cincinnati, I passed a gate announcing a Delta non-stop flight to Paris that was leaving in 45 minutes. It was early evening, and I was tired (one may not sleep on the flight deck), but I checked and the jump seat was vacant, so it was strapping in, testing the oxygen mask and headset: V2 and rotate. That was on a 767 and what a great flight deck, not quite the Starship Enterprise, but close, seats like lounge chairs surrounded by picture windows: neat stuff. By the time I got to my hotel room in Paris, I was ragged out but too buzzed to sleep. Needing to adjust the internal clock, I forced myself to sleep around midnight. At 0300 the phone rang. It was my Aunt Rebecca in Arkansas. My father had passed away.

Trying to get my head screwed on, I spent the day walking around Paris, and then the following morning went to the airport, checked the boards, and caught an American DC-10 direct to Dallas.

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smittythewelder

06-09-2014, 10:05 AM

Steve, you're about to get to serious/sad stuff, your dad's passing, so before you do I'll interject my little jumpseat story.

I think my memory of this is not too far off, so I'll state as fact that in about 1958, President Eisenhower appointed as head of the FAA one Elwood P. Quesada. Quesada was something of a pioneer aviator, who had been part of a crew that set an endurance record in the Thirties with some very early mid-air refueling. At his appointment to the FAA job he was a retired Army Air Corps general, who had evidently taken going by the book to heart. Very quickly he made himself the most hated man, running the most hated agency, among the ranks of airline pilots.

Before Quesada, generally speaking the airliner captain was king of his realm, at least once his realm was airborne, and the tenor of the operation followed the personality of the captain. Airlines tended to have their own personalities, too. Pan Am was noted, at least in earlier days, for rather imperious captains who did all of the flying themselves, and expected a measure of truckling from mere co-pilots and navigators. Captains for other outfits were usually less grand, and in my dad's company, Pacific Northern Airlines, the biggest carrier to and within the Alaska Territory, captains generally split the flying duties with co-pilots, letting them get plenty of landings and other practice. Now, Quesada didn't really change any of this. But before he came along, some of the the other aspects of flying, from the aircrews' standpoint, were optional and tended to considerable informality. Cartoons circulated through the flying community featuring such scenes as compliant stews sitting on pilots' laps during the flight were overdone but funny because they were not entirely without basis. Airline pilots in those golden years of the business (1950s) were still esteemed by the public, and nearly any captain did a little basking in this glow by putting on his uniform jacket and hat and leaving the co-pilot running things while he took a slow stroll back through the cabin, yakking with the stews, schmoozing with passengers and "showing the flag" while on the way to his goal, the men's room. Sometimes a passenger or two would be invited to come up front and have a close-up look at the flight deck and marvel at all of the gauges and such. Most passengers liked all of this, and assumed that the captain had the judgment to know when the airplane was safe with just the co-pilot in the cockpit. And they were right about that. Almost always.

"Sonofabitch" Quesada, put an end to the optionality and informality of the good old days of airliner operation. Pilots were to go by the book, stay at the controls, and pay attention to flying and only to flying. No more guests in the cockpit, no more "showing the flag." A captain was a hired hand, not a Hollywood star or a host for cockpit tours. And when you turned sixty, you were out. The glory was gone, and veteran flyers hated the change. In retrospect, Quesada was probably right. Planes had carried two or three dozen passengers, but soon they would be carrying hundreds, and the skies would have more and more traffic. An insistence on full-time professionalism within tight bounds was probably inevitable. But it went down hard at the time.

Sorry, Steve, that turned out to be a long preamble to my little personal experience of what flying was in the pre-Quesada days. We were living in Seattle at the time, but decided to take a family trip back to visit friends in Anchorage, where we had lived for seven years. The trip north coincided with one of Dad's scheduled flights, so on a beautiful summer morning in 1957, Mom and us three kids joined the other passengers walking out on the ramp to the huge Lockheed Constellation, its huge engines under shiny aluminum nacelles streaked by hot exhaust gases and occasionally dripping oil from the "externally-lubricated Wright" 3350 cubic inch radials. Oh, air travel was fun then! Today passengers don't walk up to a plane, they are herded directly from the terminal to the airplane cabin down a fully enclosed cattle chute, very antiseptic and safe, but then the airplanes of the jet age are so boring, just high-efficiency appliances, that maybe it doesn't matter.

Anyway, as airline employee family members we were on a standby basis for whatever seats had gone unsold, which happily enough for us were often seats in first-class. A Connie generally had just two rows of first-class seats, total of eight, just aft of the cockpit door and ahead of the wing and engines. The two rows faced each other, so that if you were in the first row and had one of the window seats you had an awesome view looking aft at the whole leading edge and the front of both engines on your side. I won't go into a long description of engine start-up, taxiing to the runway, engine run-up, and take off (though I love to tell about it, as the thing was repeatedly engraved in my soul when I was young, and certainly led to my avid interest in mechanicalia).

Up in the air, headed north, Pacific Northern Airlines "Flagliner" (all the airlines had goofy names for their flights then) Flight Three bound for Anchorage with a stop in Juneau was that day the airplane ride of a lifetime. Because the weather was perfect all the way, and because there wasn't a lot of traffic, Dad got clearance to fly the trip down low, maybe 6000 feet (I lost him a couple of years ago or I'd ask). We were over the heavily wooded islands of the Inside Passage most of the way, a glorious sight, with a fishing boat or other craft here and there to add interest over the five and a half hour trip.

I went into all of that on the changes in flying wrought by FAA Admin Quesada just months after this trip to make clear my personal good luck in what happened next. We're cruising along, maybe 220 knots, my nose pressed against the window, when I get a tap on the shoulder. It was the co-pilot, whom I knew just enough to recognize (PNA was a small company, and everybody knew everybody, and since they had almost all lived in Anchorage and started and raised young families there from 1946 to at least 1953, families knew families). "Phil, your dad wants you to come on up front." Minutes later I was strapped onto the jumpseat, a position of glory not even available in Heaven, to my thinking. When the rules changed shortly thereafter, this could not have been done, but at eleven I got to see the whole operation as the Connie approached Juneau (this could be a tricky approach, but we had perfect weather), did the ground turnaround, and took off. I've told you about the ten thousand take-off horsepower of those shorty-stack engines; oh lordy, what a sound, what a sight from the jumpseat!

But the best was yet to come. Back at cruising altitude and the co-pilot gets out of his seat and says, "Come on up and sit here, Phil." Oh! My! As a pilot's kid (and my mother had worked for the Weather Bureau during the war), I had absorbed a little bit of actual knowledge about flying and weather, about control surfaces, and the basic guages. But with the multiplicity of gauges and switches and throttles, many of these multiplied by four, it took a long time to identify anything that was somewhat recognizable to me. So here's the part that would send the modern bureaucrats into a tizzy. After I was in the right seat for a while, Dad in the left seat says, "Here, take the yoke and try flying it. See if you can steer around that little cloud there." I'm eleven years old, the kid with the stick. Of course, Dad's there coordinating my "steering" with the rudder pedals, and ready to take over if I start doing something stupid. But I'm pretty cautious and easy with machinery by nature, so I just eased the Connie around the cloud with no jerkiness or other drama, and the passengers would never have detected a thing. After that few minutes of somewhat stunned delight, I was put back in the jumpseat, then sent back to the cabin before we started letting down for Anchorage. And I guess I've never recovered. I have lousy eyesight, therefore glasses with a lot of correction, therefore could never fly commercially myself. But I did it once.

Ketzer

06-09-2014, 03:55 PM

Great flying memories, Smitty. Those were simpler times, for certain, and we were fortunate to experience them. Pre-9/11, crews, especially foreign carriers, often left the cockpit door open. Now, of course, they’re locked, barred, and flight attendants give you a ration if you get too close, all with just cause.

But, no, that was as sad as this thread is going to get, and this story is pretty much a done deal. I will add, though, that Uncle Ed passed away two years after my Dad (they were both 68); my Mom lived to be 81, and Vernon Ashley, who just passed away in 2013, was 83, I think. My Dad’s life, as short as it was, was full and exciting; he sure loved boat racing and other motor sports. I do wish he had been blessed with better health his last several years, and that he had lived long enough to see his Rangers come back into prominence with the likes of Spielberg’s, “Saving Private Ryan,” to hear Tom Brokaw name “The Greatest Generation,” and to witness Baby Boomers, including yours truly, looking away from their navel long enough to appreciate and acknowledge what their parents overcame and accomplished. Thanks for your posts, Smitty.

Allen J. Lang

06-09-2014, 04:05 PM

Smitty, it is a good thing they did not have you pump the gear down. The main wheels would fall naturally, but, the nose gear had to be pumped down manually against the wind. When I used to go on test hops in the AF, we had the 1049 C-121 super Connies, the co pilot would get up and tell me to take to take his seat and pump away. When the pressure built up enough, it was a bugger on the last part as the nose gear started to rise. The wind pressure against the gear and gear door earned you a work out. Just before I left in '62, they converted from -91 to -93 3350 engines giving them just over 1 hp per cu in at take off and what a mess. They had to figure the oil milage instead of fuel milage. Just a quick up around the pattern, they had to go to the wash rack with oil dripping all over the wings and tail. They were a sweet flying old bird.

Ketzer

06-10-2014, 05:31 AM

Allen, I never got to ride on a Connie like you and Smitty, but we had an AWAC Connie based in Keflavik when I was there in ’72-’73, and we boys in Life Support had to climb up into it to swap out parachutes and cold weather survival sleds. Of course, we spent time going around to the different stations, sat in the seats and checked it out. Fun times in Iceland.

smittythewelder

06-13-2014, 08:17 AM

I don't recall that I heard about that, Allen, but can readily believe it; on the ground, a Connie sat in an aristocratic, nose-high attitude, requiring quite a long nose gear. One time, some key link in the nosegear of a PNA Connie (nine-two Victor, IIRC) was left out or fell out. The airplane took off without drama, but when it landed at Juneau or Annette Island the nosegear set up a wild shimmy like the castor on a shopping cart. When they finally got the airplane stopped, the violence of that shimmy had deeply wrinkled a six-foot section of the fuselage on both sides, forward of the wing. The airplane was so old at that point, mid-'60s, that they just ferried it back to Seattle and parked it as a parts-plane. The funny part of the story is that after it had sat for many months, some new suit demanded that the "eyesore" be sold for scrap. Sure enough, months later the company had to go to the scrap outfit and buy parts off the plane, at top dollar.

Turbo-compounding those engines for more power and supposed fuel efficiency added more oil seals to leak. Alaska Airlines is a well-run outfit today, but fifty years ago and more it was the joke of the industry, with employees racing to the bank on payday in hopes their checks wouldn't bounce. In fact, there were times the fuel suppliers wouldn't take Alaska's credit cards. Anyway, in 1964 I was working on the ramp at PNA in Seattle. Alaska had somehow come up with the cash to build a hanger, next to PNA's, at the south end of the field. Alaska had their first two jetliners at that point, whether new or second-hand I don't know. In competition with the Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC-8, the Convair 880 was said to be the hot ship of the three. That might have been so, but it seemed to me that the engines on Alaska's Convairs all sounded like they had bad bearings, a weird sound. Anyway, at the same time, Alaska had bought one of TWA's surplus Lockheed "Jetstreams," the L1649 Constellation. This was in many ways the ultimate piston propliner, big, fast, long-range, and a smooth quiet ride. But it got into production too late, at the same time jets were appearing. TWA bought some, Lufthansa, not many others. Where they all went, I don't know, maybe straight to scrap because they needed a lot more maintenance than any jet. Certainly Alaska's old TWA cast-off needed some. I would look out across the way from the PNA hanger to where the Alaska mechanics were firing up the turbo-compound engines on their one L1649. And every time, at least one of the engines was just POURING white smoke out the exhaust and all over the south end of the airport. About once every week or so they'd try 'er again, same result, white smoke all over the place. Those guys should've tried to buy PNA's simpler and very reliable L749s, but PNA was still making money with them.

Believe it or not, I can segue this back to boatracing. In the mid or late-Seventies, IIRC, a bright, energetic young guy named Pete LaRock, having done some volunteer work on Unlimiteds starting at Bob Gilliam's operation, bought himself a boat. Might've been the Lincoln Thrift. Anyway, Pete is proud owner, crew chief, and driver of this boat. Allison V-12, 1710 cubic inches, two turbochargers augmenting the little Allison centrifugal blower. A fine summer day at Seafair, Pete comes down for the start of Heat 1B with the rest of the pack . . . with, evidently, a blown seal in one of those turbos. Again, just POURING out a dense cloud of white smoke from the exhaust. But Pete either isn't seeing it or isn't worried about it. Runs the entire six laps with smoke, I mean S M O K E, pouring out to make a gigantic oval-shaped white cloud over Lake Washington, and all of us laughing our heads off and yelling, "GO PETE!!!"

Ketzer

09-27-2014, 11:03 AM

Since I ran out of boat racing stories, that was to be the end of my thread, but since then, Wayne and Smitty told me they missed it and wished I had more to add. Well, early in the thread I mentioned the U.S. Army Rangers, as my father was one of Darby’s in WWII, but said I wouldn’t write further about the Rangers as it was too vast to cover, and it was going too far afield from boat racing. I’ve had second thoughts.

My father, Steve Ketzer, passed away in 1993. Consequently, he never saw the Rangers come back into prominence or get the recognition they deserved. He never saw “Saving Private Ryan,” read the book, “The Boys of Point Du Hoc,” or heard the phrase, “The Greatest Generation.” He never went to a Ranger Reunion and didn’t say much about what he did during the war.

In 2001, seeking information about my father’s time with the Rangers, I linked up with the Ranger Battalions Association of WWII, and my brother, Charlie, and I attended a WWII Ranger reunion in New Orleans that was scheduled to start on September 11, 2001, and last for several days. After the events of that day, I imagined the reunion would be cancelled. I called the hotel in New Orleans and talked to someone from the organization who was doing prep work for the reunion. I was told, “Hell, yes, we’re still having a reunion!” Although all planes were grounded, people from around the country were hopping in their cars and driving to New Orleans.

I met Rangers at that reunion who knew my father, and they were just as fun and full of piss and vinegar as my old man. It was like being around him again. Since that reunion, and for the next twelve years, I showed up at national reunions to serve as bartender and run the hospitality suite. I became friends with and got to know Rangers from all six WWII Battalions. Today, very few remain, but they still have a reunion. The next will be in Branson, MO, here in a few days, and so I am on my way to Branson.

In addition to bar tending, I’ve written articles for their newsletter, and while it’s a world away from boat racing, it does concern “The Ketzer Racing Team,” so I thought I’d put a few on here, the first of which will be in my next post that, with any luck, will follow in a few minutes.

Ketzer

09-27-2014, 11:18 AM

Ranger Fathers: Desire and Determination

My Ranger father, Steve Ketzer, and my mother, Jane, raised three boys, no girls (poor mom), so I don’t really know what it was like to be a Ranger daughter. I think it was Jerry Styles, or maybe Dan Galbraith, who suggested that Ranger daughters were raised as Princesses Papoulis. Maybe it was Dallas Pruitt, but anyway, Ranger sons had no connection to the Papoulis. A Ranger father, raising only sons, was like a silverback gorilla that spoke. Yes, and the gorilla used odd expressions, such as walla-ho, You ain’t woofin’, something about a house mouse, and if you asked him what time it was, he would likely respond, Half past a monkey’s…and you know the rest.

A Ranger father could be a world of fun, if he was happy with you. If he wasn’t happy, it was, “Katie, bar the door!” My son Eric went through a stage where he criticized me for not expressing my pride in him to the extent he thought was warranted. I told him, “Jeeze, Eric, I wasn’t raised like that. My brothers and I never fretted over whether or not dad was proud of us, just whether or not he was mad at us.” If he wasn’t on our case, we were doing good; if he was, we weren’t. It was as simple as that, not that we never heard he was proud of us. We did, but that came vicariously, or we overheard him telling someone else, like the time I overheard him berating a couple aircraft mechanics: “Stevie is only fourteen years old, and he does better work than that!” Hey, I took that as a compliment, and figured he was proud of me, too. Mainly, like my baby-boomer high school friends, we just wanted our fathers to leave us alone. A father would put you to work; he would destroy your weekend; he would kill any possibility of a love life.

No doubt, like most members of the Greatest Generation, our Ranger fathers told us that we could do anything we wanted to do, be anything we wanted to be, providing we had desire and determination. Concepts such as determination, quality, loyalty, truthfulness, pride in work, et cetera, weren’t pie-in-the-sky ideals, but basic minimum standards. The Greatest Generation believed and preached those things, but if you had a Ranger father, you could multiply it by a hundred: It was a way of life. However, you didn’t get the preaching, because they led by example (well, maybe some preaching).

Off and on, and from the age of twelve, I worked with my father at the airport. My job included cleaning the hangar, shop and airplanes, and doing minor work on airplanes, such as removing inspection panels so mechanics could inspect. As a kid, the inspection panels on the underside of a wing appeared to have a million screws, and they were all tight. The screws I considered to be stuck, I left for one of the mechanics or my father to break loose so I wouldn’t bugger them up. One day, I asked my father to come and break loose some screws. He got under there with me, went down the wing, and it was, “Pop…pop…pop…pop.” In less than a minute, he had them all broken loose. Before he crawled from under the wing, he turned, handed the screwdriver to me, and said, “Determination.” That was it; that was the preaching, and sometimes, I have to tell you, it kind of made me mad. But, after that, the number of screws I could not break, dwindled to but a few.

Some things my brothers and I learned through demonstration and repetition. If we slammed the door, we might have to come back in and demonstrate the proper way to open and close a door. Depending on the severity of the slam, we might have to demonstrate it quite a few times. Whatever the task, we were instructed that, “Quality comes first; then we’ll worry about quantity.” However, in not many words, he taught me that quality was relative, or came in different forms. We were rebuilding a wood and fabric aircraft, had the wings off and the entire airplane stripped down to a skeleton. My job was to clean, sand and varnish the fuselage. Well, I was putting on the first coat of spar varnish, and I thought I was doing a great job, being very meticulous: no runs, sags or brush marks. I glimpsed dad watching me, and I thought, “Ah-ha! He is no doubt admiring my work and thinking how meticulous and conscientious I am.” While that may have been what he was thinking, what he said was, “Who do you think you are, Rembrandt? Put some varnish on there.” It didn’t take much thinking to decide he was correct.

I don’t want to give the impression that advice from my Ranger father was limited to the typically male arena. No, my dad gave fashion advice, as well. He taught us how to tie a Windsor knot and a bow and how to polish shoes, among other things. As soon as we started working, my brothers and I bought our own clothes, usually around the age of fifteen. I don’t recall if it was a requirement or not, but it was if you didn’t want the double-kneed Wranglers. Anyway, I ordered an outfit from the Spiegel catalog, and had it on when dad came home. I was considered “husky” back then. Boys in high school wore their jeans tight, stove-pipe legs and tight. We in junior high followed suit. So while wearing my new black jeans, I saw dad watching me. As I walked away, I imagined him admiring the style and cut of those catalog clothes that I had selected and purchased myself, and he may have been, but what he said was, “Damn, Stevie! It looks like you’ve got watermelons in you back pockets!” Oh, yeah, they could dish it out, but they could take it, too. When dad started losing his hair, I brought home from the schoolyard every joke about bald men and repeated it at the dinner table (Hey, mister! Shine your head for a quarter!). Dad just laughed. Three decades later, those jokes came back to haunt me.

My brothers and I were convinced there was nothing dad couldn’t do, and do it better than the average bear, except win a spelling bee. Dad couldn’t spell for beans, and I razzed him unmercifully. Once at the airport, he was filling out an aircraft logbook, and I was poking fun at his lack of spelling skills. With a quizzical expression, he looked up from the logbook and said, “I know how to spell aircraft and engine, what else do I need?” We all went through a phase when we thought, “Hmm. I just may be smarter than the old man.” An occasion comes to mind. Dad was being inducted into the Lion’s Club. He had to show up and give a speech, and he asked me to go along. I thought, “Oh, no. He’s in over his head this time. Dad doesn’t know anything about public speaking.” Being a seasoned high school sophomore, I knew something about public speaking. I knew it was all about fear and embarrassment. Apparently, dad didn’t know enough to be afraid, and since he couldn’t spell embarrassment, I figured I’d just have to go and be afraid and embarrassed for him. Well, they gave him an introduction, and he, all smiles, hurried up to the podium and immediately began telling stories and jokes. He had them laughing and in the palm of his hand until he sat down. I couldn’t believe it. Maybe he learned that in the Rangers, too. I couldn’t figure it out.

I learned a great deal from my Ranger father and would have learned much more if I hadn’t spent half my youth daydreaming. He taught me how to drive and work on cars and race boats; fly and work on airplanes; ride and work on motorcycles…how to shoot a rifle, tie a tie, home improvement: everything. Not that such instruction made me an expert at anything. No, it was only an introduction, but I knew I could become an expert, if I supplied the desire and determination. Yeah, I imagine quite a few of our Ranger fathers were gorillas, but we wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Master Oil Racing Team

09-27-2014, 12:08 PM

Glad to see you back on here Steve. Of course the stories of your Dad belong here. As you know, I had quite a bit about my Dad's earlier years in the Baldy thread so people could get an understanding of where he came from. I got that idea from Ron Hill who has told lots of stories about his Dad Russ and brother Russ, Jr. It makes the story full to know about the kind of people that are in it. Look forward to more.

Allen J. Lang

09-27-2014, 12:45 PM

Steve love reading your exploits as I do Wayne's. Keep it up.

Ketzer

09-27-2014, 01:56 PM

Thanks for the welcome back. I'll have more after Branson (news at 11).

Ketzer

09-11-2015, 10:34 AM

Remembering 9/11, Steve Meade, and my boat racing father, here's an article I wrote for the WWII Ranger Newsletter in either 2004 or 2005.

Colonel Stephen J. Meade

Last year, while Vicki and I were on a cruise to the Panama Canal, I read Kenneth Pollack’s new book, The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict between Iran and America. Pollack also wrote, The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq, which was published in 2002 and a book worth second and third reads as time passes. Anyway, I wasn’t far into The Persian Puzzle when I ran across the following passage:

Then Mohammad Reza Shah turned to constructing an effective internal security apparatus. He requested help from the United States, who sent Army Colonel Stephen J. Meade, on loan to the CIA, to help Iran organize a modern intelligence service.

I said, “Ha!” aloud, underlined Colonel Stephen J. Meade, and in the margin wrote, “Ranger,” then continued the passage.

At least initially, the CIA tried to keep the shah’s new intelligence service focused on the Soviets, providing only basic training in tradecraft, Russian language skills, and mostly innocuous information on the Tudeh [Iranian communist party]. Meade urged the shah to keep domestic and foreign intelligence separate and tired hard to entice the Iranians to work on the Soviet target. But the shah had other ideas.

In the end, the shah created the much hated SAVAK, which wasn’t what Colonel Meade or the CIA had in mind, but that’s the way she goes. I first met Steve Meade at the 2001 WWII Ranger Battalions Association (RBA) reunion in New Orleans. The event was scheduled to kick off on September 11, 2001. Due to events on that day, I called to see if the reunion was being cancelled and was told it most certainly was “not” being cancelled. With rumors of gas shortages and gas selling for ten dollars a gallon, my brother Charlie and I drove down from Arkansas on September 12, 2001. It was our first RBA reunion. Since all aircraft were grounded, Rangers and their families were en route, driving in from all over the country. The RBA was shorthanded for the first couple days. Charlie and I were put to work running the Hilton’s movie theatre, where we introduced and played various Ranger videos.

It is not difficult to describe the feeling of being surrounded by Rangers the day after 9/11. The feeling was of absolute security, confidence and pride. Charlie and I had stumbled into the camp of the greatest warriors in the world, an extended family consisting of WWII Rangers, some Korean and Vietnam era Rangers, and a contingent of active duty Rangers led by a young sergeant named Marty Barreras who showed up to present the colors and give lectures, the latter group soon to find their way to Afghanistan, but all of whom, despite the age difference, had a calm demeanor that said, “Listen, if we’re buddies, I’m the greatest guy in the world; if not, don’t tread on me, pal.” Rangers: Quintessential Americans.

So Charlie and I were out by the pool, taking a break from the theatre, when we heard someone shout, “HEY!” We looked around, but couldn’t determine the source. Then we heard it again: “HEY!” We looked to the far side of the pool and saw a man sitting on a bench, bandages on his forearms, his hands resting on a cane. A tall blond, older woman stood by his side. He thrust his chin at us: “HEY!” Charlie and I looked around, then at each other. We pointed to ourselves, a silent, “Us?”

“YEAH, YOU! COME HERE!” He wasn’t a large man, but he had a large and commanding voice, so as commanded, we went. And that was our introduction to Stephen J. Meade and his lovely wife, Joan. As it turned out, Steve just wanted company. He wanted to know who we were, where we were from, what we did; he wanted to know about our Ranger father. As it turned out, Steve was also a member or the original 1st Ranger Battalion, as was our father. In fact, in June of 1942, it was Capt. Stephen J. Meade, and he commanded A Company or the original 1st Battalion.

As time went on and I read more books on the Rangers, Steve Meade popped up in a number of them, including Darby and Baumer’s, We Led the Way; Mir Bahmanyar’s, Darby’s Rangers 1942-45, and Robert Todd Ross’, U.S. Army Rangers & Special Forces of WWII. Company A Ranger, Thomas Sullivan, beginning training at Achnacarry recorded the following in his diary, 6/17/42: Assigned A Company, Capt. Steve Meade commanding. Speed marches a.m., calisthenics, tumbling, jiu-jitsu and sports p.m., Day ends at 5. 7/12/42: Scaled down—abseiling—castle sheer drop of forty feet. Most of us burn or blister hands and thighs. Captain [Meade] first as always.

But standing out by the pool in New Orleans, Steve was more interested in hearing about us. When he learned I was from Alaska, he told a story about the 82nd Airborne jumping in Greenland on a training exercise during the 1950s. Steve said enroute to the jump, it crossed their minds that they had no idea how the parachutes would react at such cold temperatures; indeed, they joked about the chutes not opening. But they jumped, and the chutes opened. Preparing to jump, Steve said they were advised there was a woman behind every tree in Greenland; unfortunately, upon landing they discovered there were no trees in Greenland. Joan gave a sweet Mona Lisa smile, no doubt having heard that story a few times.

I saw Steve again at the 2002 RBA Reunion in New Orleans, the Minneapolis reunion in 2003, and we corresponded between reunions. In one letter, he apologized for a late reply stating, “I’m so occupied with helping the medical profession with their new cars, larger homes, etc., that I have little time to myself.” At Minneapolis, he began to call me, "my man, Friday," as I helped him negotiate the buffet line since he was having a bit of trouble getting around and Joan was unable to attend. Steve sat at the table with RBA officers and other dignitaries. Space was limited at that table. I told Steve, “No sweat, I’ll sit over there; just give me the high sign if you need me.” But he wouldn’t have it. They squeezed in a chair for me across from the famous Bing Evans and next to the infamous and Nicorette chewing Carl Lehmann.

Stephen J. Meade passed away the following year on May 19, 2004, surrounded by his five daughters. He was 91 years old. It was only when Joan sent a copy of his biographical data that I began to understand what he accomplished in life. As if being an officer with the original 1st Ranger Battalion and being awarded a bronze star were not enough, Steve was an instructor at the Infantry School, and then commanded a battalion with the 82nd Airborne (1955-57). His political assignments included Assistant Army Attaché to Lebanon (1946-48), Acting Army Attaché to Syria (1948-49), Assistant Army Attaché to Iran (1953-55), during which time he was a consultant to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and following his time with the 82nd Airborne, he was Airborne Advisor to the Nationalist Chinese Army from 1957-60, where he personally advised Chiang Kai-shek on airborne matters. In addition to Chiang Kai-shek, Steve Meade had personal relationships with the Shah of Iran, President Nasser of Egypt, President Chehab of Lebanon and President Ayup Khan of Pakistan. Americans seldom lead the pack when it comes to foreign languages, but Steve Meade was fluent in French and Spanish, and could get by on his Portuguese, Italian, German and Arabic.

There is a letter, dated July 13, 1953, in Steve’s file from General J. Lawton Collins, Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, that reads as follows:

Dear Colonel Meade:

I have recently received letters from The Secretary of State, The Honorable John Foster Dulles, and from Mr. Allen W. Dulles, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, expressing their high opinion of your professional services. The Secretary of State complimented you most highly for the splendid assistance you rendered to him and his party on his recent trip to the Near East and South Asia. Mr. Allen Dulles was equally praiseworthy about your record of service with the agency. Needless to say, it is always gratifying to receive such laudatory reports, and I want to take this opportunity to add this expression of personal appreciation for the fine work you are doing.

Stephen J. Meade, having joined the National Guard in 1929 at the age of sixteen, retired from the Army in 1962 and began another career as a financial adviser for Waddell and Reed Financial Services. In William O. Darby’s farewell address to the Rangers, he said: In whatever field of profession you follow, I know that you will continue as civilians with the same spirit and qualities you demonstrated as a Ranger. Your aggressiveness and initiative will be tempered to adjust to civilian life with little difficulty. In your heart, as in mine, you will always have that feeling—of being a Ranger always.

More than sixty years have passed since Darby spoke those words, and a handful of WWII Rangers remain, but those words were never more true. Whether Darby’s or Mucci’s Rangers, whether the Boys of Point Du Hoc or those from Bloody Omaha, the lives of those Rangers bear witness, the life of a Ranger like Stephen J. Meade bears witness: He requested help from the United States, who sent Army Colonel Stephen J. Meade…[a Ranger always].